Etic and Emic, Two sides of the same coin

I’m sure we’ve all been told the phrase “think outside the box”, well did you know that this means much more than a way one perceives a certain scenario or situation? Emic means analyzing a group’s culture or language from the inside. This means that the researcher would have a perspective that is directly or very similar to the perspectives of the people from the community that is being analyzed.  On the other hand, we have etic where the researcher analyzes a group’s culture and language from the outside, meaning the researcher does not have direct access to the perspective of the community.  Philosophers argue constantly on which of these two perspectives are right when it comes to analyzing certain cultures or groups. On one hand, etic research seeks to find common ground among several cultures while emic focuses specifically on a certain culture with no cross-cultural context.

You may not realize it but etic and emic perspectives are found everywhere throughout the world today. It varies from translations between languages, in religious settings, and even historic texts. Scholars and students study religious philosophy through an emic perspective, where they try to understand different religious groups such as Christianity, Buddhism, etc. to help explain their beliefs, values, and practices. There was a wide variety of scholars who practiced these religious beliefs and were able to explain the meaning behind them which helps other scholars to understand religious practices.  This is a great example of an emic perspective, where one can explain a culture’s values by involving themselves from the inside. However, there are many religious cultures that are very exclusive in terms of their worldview. This forces the researcher to take an etic perspective of the cultural identity of that religious group through an outsider’s view. This view is solely just the view of the researcher and no one else from an outsiders perspective.

Lastly, we can find several historic texts that could be analyzed by many historians and each translates it into their own meaning or definition. So, with that being said, how do we as scholars put ourselves in the position to understand the context of ancient myths that are translated from their original language? Can translated material accurately represent the deeper embedded meanings within an ancient language? Historians who translate material do not directly look at an ancient text or document and directly try to translate it word by word because then it wouldn’t mean say anything about the context. For example, in ancient Greece, there are many different conflicting theories on why the Bronze Age collapsed. Some say it was natural disasters, some historians say it was “the attack of the sea-people”, and some say it was just mass migration. The reason why people agree with the theory of an invasion from surrounding colonies was that there was a document written by one of the citizens to his dad saying “Father, the people have arrived, the houses are on fire.” This translation only made sense because there was a theory that ancient Greece was invaded because if this theory was not suggested, that sentence could mean anything. Etic and emic perspectives help us understand certain social constructs that are hard to translate directly, it helps us understand it through a metaphorical and analogical way.

These two perspectives have been and always will be in conflict because they are two different analytical research methods trying to achieve similar goals. But without one or the other, we as students and scholars would not be able to identify a majority of the historic texts or languages found today. We would not be able to relate to the past social constructs and we wouldn’t be able to translate or find the meaning behind messages left behind from past civilizations.  What do you think? Do you believe that these two analytical research methods are different? Think about it and maybe one day, you will be the one contributing to the conflicting views between the two perspectives.