emic and etic – Language, Philosophy and Society
I thought this issue we might be discussing gender, and thought this followed on naturally from my discussion of the sex (and love?) life of the stag, but of course gender comes into language as well. But I shall not discuss this.
As I pointed out too, there are indeed linguistic issues when discussing the purpose of life. But nor shall I discuss this. Let us just get on with the living and loving even if action does not naturally come to a philosopher.
Nor will I discuss two well-trodden topics, Semantics and Philosophy of Language – I shall take a nap from Carnap (rotfl) – instead I shall go where many linguistic philosophers fear to tread, the field of phonetics and phonology: when they study linguistics there is usually a compulsory paper on phonetics and they HATE it. Whereas I for one quite like it.
In phonetics and phonology, we have what is known as an –emic/etic dichotomy. In phonology, a phoneme is a set of sounds which never contrast to give words of different meanings. Thus the d- and p- of pot are different phonemes, since dot and pot mean different things. But there are different ways in which I can pronounce t, without changing the meaning, thus the t on pot can be pronounced in various ways. I can for example put a glottal stop just before the t, or a little h just after, and for many people both. These various sounds are phonetically different, and in particular this can be shown through acoustic measurements.
But we have here the idea that if x and y are not strictly identical, we might still be socially conditioned to regard them as identical. In both social and philosophical terms we might regard John of today and John of yesterday as being identical: thus we might observe that John was and is a buffoon.
By contrast, the –etic has to be more objective, and to discuss this I shall re-introduce two diagrams from previous issues, with relevant annotation added:
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a ‘maroon’ socialist
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a cultural analysis of exploitation
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I have shown both diagrams in previous issues, but here I have annotated them. As I said then, it should be said that these diagrams, ‘saying it in maroon’, represent an informal account of stages in a socioeconomic process, and as such should be regarded as a tool for formulating a more rigorous hypothesis. But in the both diagrams, the elements representing culture are marked –emic, and the pink element, representing skills (or perhaps in one case ‘scientific socialism’), is marked –etic. At this stage we do not use –emic concepts though we may well try and create them on an objective and/or scientific basis.
In natural language, phonologists may use the criterion of different sounds different meaning, but this is basically a diagnostic device. Phonemes have a psychological reality, and after early ’teens they are difficult to change. We have discovered quite recently that something similar happens with colour. If we are presented with a set of coloured balls and asked to pick the odd one out, linguistic (ie. vocabulary) criteria are used. If they are all red, we will take longer to decide to pick say a more scarlet ball. This of course is –emic, perhaps we could talk about chromemes, as does Pickett (1997) in his book on Early Persian Tilework: The Medieval Flowering of Kāshī: “By analogy I would like to coin the terms chromeme and allochrome, the first to indicate variations in color that are significant in making a design intelligible [the second to indicate insignificant variations.” A painter will not necessarily have an –emic approach to colour, but he almost certainly will in terms of the standards of his genre.
Turning to the right-hand diagram, we now see grey and blue, the ‘baddie’ colours. Here we see ‘hypercorrection’. This is basically a linguistic concept: we see it for example when people speaking an accent/dialect dropping H’s put them in in the wrong place. They are trying to do things ‘correctly’. On a social level there are parallels which constitute over-generalisation. Thus people in the States are terrified of communism. For them socialists are clearly communists, therefore they are terrified of socialised medicine. To my mind, this sort of fear, based on over-generalisations is deliberately encouraged within exploited groups. That’s what newspapers are for: they are of course free to do otherwise, but stray too far and they might well not make a profit.
Then we have next to the blue: P.O.S.H. Supposedly ‘port-out-starboard-home’. But exploiting groups reinforce their power with concepts of prestige. They find ways of making the exploited group want to follow the example of their exploiters.
These are the people who set social criteria as whether x=y; which to my mind equates to saying they know what’s what.
Now talking about people who know what’s what, I shall now introduce another diagram: the self-image of the Tories, which I have been dying to produce:
Everything’s there, and it appears that in the good old days some Tories had principles, the Church, the WI (fully clothed of course) and cricket. The City and industry are kept out of sight... anyway they were liberal/Whig inventions. Such Tories would understand the ‘maroon socialist’ concept of customary care ‘quite well actually’. And here we see two faces, one toward England’s green and pleasant land, and the other towards Empire. The colours are wrong of course... they fit in with my other diagrams and indeed the armed forces would not be associated with pink. Perhaps we have a social model of the English language especially the ‘wrong kind of emic’!
Almost everything is emic. This is of course my analysis and not part of the self-image unless knowing what’s what counts. But the preponderance of emic and a lack of asking what’s what suggests a serious rut, except for the case of the armed forces, and one of the two faces of the Law of the Land, facing towards Empire. Here principles of justice applied at home are jettisoned.
Now in Sociology there is a debate as to whether the emic/etic dichotomy is found there as well as in phonology. I would say yes... everything is emic, except on the edges of social change. And something very similar is relevant in Political Philosophy.
The modern Tory has discovered finance, but in a very ‘emic’ way except perhaps for derivatives and other destructive financial products. Apart from universities, research has little appeal except in the military and perhaps in the ‘fight against terrorism’. So our model of British decline is indeed ‘not bad’.
By Martin Prior
