Talk:Emic and etic
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[edit] Expand
At least needs some examples... Towsonu2003 22:57, 25 January 2007 (UTC)
[edit] removed phrase
"An "etic" account is a description of a behavior in terms familiar to the observer." isn't in accordance with "making universal claims will rely on etic accounts." --> if the scientist rely on his/her own observations ("etic" according to the first sentence), s/he cannot make universal claims because he'll be acting on imposed etic (researcher imposing own perspective / emic on the subject) Towsonu2003 23:02, 25 January 2007 (UTC)
[edit] Nattiez
I removed this
- Musicologist and semiologist Jean-Jacques Nattiez (1990: 61) describes an "'emic' approach" as "an analysis that reflects the viewpoint of the native informants" and an "'etic' approach" as "an analysis accomplished only by means of the methodological tools and categories of the researcher."
because it is unclear and can only confuse the reader. Assuming Nattiez is correct in his definition of emic, the question is, how do we know what the emic view is? In the social sciences, it is through the research of an investigator, using particular methodological tools. Thus, his definition of etic does not serve to distinguish etic from emic. In fact, both emic and etic together comprise methodological tools Nattiez refers to but only in relation to etic. Slrubenstein | Talk 15:03, 8 February 2007 (UTC)
"whether the phones /b/ and /v/ make a contrast in meaning in a minimal pair in the language" -Quote from the article.
Just thought to mention this.. I believe everybody knows what /b/ and /v/ refer to?
[edit] backwards?
I'm not sure if this is the case in anthropology, but the linguistic usage of the concepts of emic and etic are the opposite of that usage described on this page. Emic refers to the abstract entity. A phoneme can never be perceived. Phones are the perceived articulations of phonemes. I'm not sure then, why etics would be used to establish universal comparisons, since anything etic in relation to human activity would, by analogy to linguistics, be a local articulation of a more general concept, like burial of the dead or seasonal festivals. The emic concepts should be the ones used for cross-cultural comparison. —Preceding unsigned comment added by JesseBeach (talk • contribs) 03:39, 21 September 2007 (UTC)
- The sources given are Pike, Goodenough, and Harris - you will have to check those sources. Slrubenstein | Talk 12:00, 21 September 2007 (UTC)
- Ah, your observations are interesting, JesseBeach, and I can see how you arrive at the logic that you state. However, the info is not backwards. The way to understand it is to focus on interpretive judgments about whether physical-universe differences matter or not. A phonemic interpretation is more abstract, as you say, than a phonetic value. For example, with allophones: a human cultural system encodes a judgment about whether phonetic differences (physical-universe differences) "count" toward making a different phoneme, or if they are negligible. The physical universe itself makes no judgment—these phones are just one group of soundwaves and another group that are not physically identical. It is this concept that extrapolates to the difference between anthropological emic and etic. The emic refers to the idea of a greater degree of human interpretation, whereas the etic is *supposed* to refer to something that is closer to the physical-universe truth, involving a lesser amount of human interpretation. Now, this is problematic, because on some level *everything* that *any* human thinks is emic in some way—even if he is a scientist. But the idea is that some kinds of emicness can be objectively seen to be more emic than others (the others approach—if never totally equaling—true eticness). I agree with Slrubenstein that you should read Harris and the others yourself to get a better explanation. An example could be the phenomenon of sunrise: one human might believe quite earnestly that the sun rises because the sun-god pushes it up with his index finger. That is the emic view. The etic view is that the sun is a star and the earth's movement around it merely produces the appearance of the sun moving up and down while the earth is standing still. The etic view could be thought of as the one that's "closer to reality". (Analogously to the way that a phonetic transcription is thought to be "closer to reality" than a phonemic interpretation of the soundwaves.) But this is potentially ethnocentric and condescending, because a space alien who knows that the theories of gravity and relativity are both wrong would consider the earth scientist's "etic" view to be just another emic interpretation. Analogously, it is pointless for a linguist to think that his phonetic transcription is exactly "equal" to the soundwaves he's transcribing, because he can only differentiate the phones that his brain is capable of differentiating based on its past language experience. In other words, he's trying as hard as he can to be etic, but no one can *completely* escape emicness. — Lumbercutter 22:26, 21 September 2007 (UTC)
- To put it more simply, these emic accounts may be more abstract but they are culture bound i.e. abstracions meaningful in one speech community or culture but not another. Slrubenstein | Talk 22:32, 21 September 2007 (UTC)
- Ah, your observations are interesting, JesseBeach, and I can see how you arrive at the logic that you state. However, the info is not backwards. The way to understand it is to focus on interpretive judgments about whether physical-universe differences matter or not. A phonemic interpretation is more abstract, as you say, than a phonetic value. For example, with allophones: a human cultural system encodes a judgment about whether phonetic differences (physical-universe differences) "count" toward making a different phoneme, or if they are negligible. The physical universe itself makes no judgment—these phones are just one group of soundwaves and another group that are not physically identical. It is this concept that extrapolates to the difference between anthropological emic and etic. The emic refers to the idea of a greater degree of human interpretation, whereas the etic is *supposed* to refer to something that is closer to the physical-universe truth, involving a lesser amount of human interpretation. Now, this is problematic, because on some level *everything* that *any* human thinks is emic in some way—even if he is a scientist. But the idea is that some kinds of emicness can be objectively seen to be more emic than others (the others approach—if never totally equaling—true eticness). I agree with Slrubenstein that you should read Harris and the others yourself to get a better explanation. An example could be the phenomenon of sunrise: one human might believe quite earnestly that the sun rises because the sun-god pushes it up with his index finger. That is the emic view. The etic view is that the sun is a star and the earth's movement around it merely produces the appearance of the sun moving up and down while the earth is standing still. The etic view could be thought of as the one that's "closer to reality". (Analogously to the way that a phonetic transcription is thought to be "closer to reality" than a phonemic interpretation of the soundwaves.) But this is potentially ethnocentric and condescending, because a space alien who knows that the theories of gravity and relativity are both wrong would consider the earth scientist's "etic" view to be just another emic interpretation. Analogously, it is pointless for a linguist to think that his phonetic transcription is exactly "equal" to the soundwaves he's transcribing, because he can only differentiate the phones that his brain is capable of differentiating based on its past language experience. In other words, he's trying as hard as he can to be etic, but no one can *completely* escape emicness. — Lumbercutter 22:26, 21 September 2007 (UTC)
