Emic & Etic: Perspective Taking
One of the first things you learn in an anthropology class is the difference between the terms “emic” and “etic.” Not words you’ve ever heard before? Not surprising. In a nutshell:
Emic = An insider’s perspective
Etic = An outsider’s perspective
But what does that mean?
Well, let me tell you the story of a woman in her early 20s who up and moved to Syria, a country where she spoke the language at the level of a toddler (which might be doing a disservice to the toddler), knew no one, and understood the culture purely from an academic standpoint. It was the mid-2000s, so mobile phones existed, but were bricks, and the internet was limited to a few cafes here and there. She--or rather I--was there to do my doctoral fieldwork, to study Syrian nationalism. (What I actually wound up studying was conspiracy theories, but that’s a story for another day.)
While there, I dated a young Syrian man. One day, I was headed out to visit a friend for some tea, and on my way home, got a call from my boyfriend, asking if I had had a nice time with her. Which would have been sweet, except I hadn’t told him I was going out, much less who I was going to see. I asked how he knew, and he said a friend of his had seen me walking down the street, saw where I was going, and then called him to let him know where I was and what I was doing.
To say I was unamused would be putting it lightly. I was furious. And uncomfortable. There were clearly some trust issues in our relationship if he had his friends spying on me. To say nothing of this sense he seemed to have that he had a right to know my every movement.
But. That was my emic perspective, my assessment of the situation based on my background and understanding of what healthy dating relationships should look like. From his emic perspective, he was doing right by me, ensuring that I was safe and that my behavior wasn’t going to reflect poorly on him or his family. It was less a matter of trust and possessiveness than responsibility. And it never stopped. I was always watched, always reported on, I couldn’t move without my entire neighborhood and their entire network knowing about it. It was stifling and exhausting.
After my year or so spent there, I returned to grad school (now single). I remember walking to class one day past loads of people and realized a weight had come off my shoulders. No one was watching me. It was glorious. No one cared where I went or what I did.
No one cared.
And all of a sudden, it made me feel a little small. A little unsafe. A little unwanted.
As I got some emotional distance from it all, I tried to come to a more etic understanding of the whole thing. Relationships of all kinds in Syria, at least at that point, were different than what I was raised with. Where I perceived the observation and monitoring as a lack of trust, there it was an indication that I had been accepted in some small way as part of the community. My behavior mattered, it impacted the reputation of the people who’d taken me in. It was an expression of a more communal than individualistic identity, which was something I’d read about, but not really understood. Their watching me was the clearest indication that they cared.
If you’ve ever lived in a small town or think back to not-so-recent history, this might sound familiar for people all over the world.
So, if one were describing this culture as a part of worldbuilding lore, what might that look like?
The omniscient narrator might say: This culture has a relatively communal sense of identity, while the girlfriend came from a more individualistic culture.
An emic narrator might say: This culture has trust issues.
Another emic narrator might say: This culture strongly protects and safeguards its own.
I and many other people I told this story to initially would have said that the second and maybe even third observations were also an omniscient narrator’s voice. But they’re not. Those observations are still entirely rooted in a certain cultural experience and understanding of the world.
However, that is not to say any of those observations are wrong. The emic versions are just incomplete. As a result, emic perspectives can sometimes be hurtful or insulting (admittedly, etic perspectives can also be uncomfortable to hear, especially about our own culture and actions).
Turns out, making judgments about people and situations without knowing the entire context is problematic...
In fact, emic observations are often more useful for telling us about the speaker than whatever they’re talking about. For instance, what the second observation really tells us is that the speaker has a very different way of prioritizing and maybe even defining concepts like trust and independence than the people around her. And, as important, she doesn’t realize this fact. She takes for granted that her own definitions and value of these concepts are the definitions. So she judges. And while her observation may not be incorrect, her judgment is lacking. It’s colored by the lenses she doesn’t even realize she’s wearing.
Not knowing is what’s dangerous.
Being a truly objective, etic, omniscient narrator, then, is really, really, really difficult. You as the creator always bring your own emic perspective with you. You bring your own biases and interpretations, even when you think you don’t. That’s not something to be ashamed of, just something to be cognizant of.
Heavy stuff for a roleplaying blog. So how do we get around that?
Oftentimes when we write lore, we take the role of the omniscient narrator--the perfectly etic perspective. Except, as we just noted, it’s most likely not fully etic, because it’s subtly intertwined with your own culture here in our world. In some cases, that can lead to unintentionally reproducing all the same biases, stereotypes, and ugly pieces of our own cultures here on Earth into worlds that have nothing to do with the history that led to those things. Or sometimes we create very foreign cultures that we still quietly judge according to our own experiences.
So, to build great and interesting worlds, my first challenge to you is to go etic in a big way. Find your own biases about how cultures should work--consider your own assumptions. What can you shake up? Don’t just assume that gender roles (to say nothing of genders) look anything like they do in our world. Same for race, religion, disabilities, all sorts of things.
My second challenge is to go super-emic. Embrace the fact that people are always stuck in their own cultures. But don’t use your voice...use the voices of the people in your world. You do this all the time already when you slip lore in during dialogue with an NPC. So do it in your world prep too.
Write a small treatise on a culture’s history in the voice of a local historian who’s grumpy and underpaid because their union got broken up by the local nobility. What would that sound like? Then try writing an essay on the same culture’s religion in the voice of a prudish foreigner who’s visiting that culture for the first time and finds the whole thing a bit shocking and absurd.
I’ve tried this a few times and I find that when I do, I usually learn more about the “author’s” culture than I do about the one they’re describing. It helps me learn where their biases are, what they take for granted, what they’re blind to, what they hold dear.
Some fun things to consider when trying this approach:
Try describing the same event from multiple perspectives. It could be something big and historical or small like a village festival. How would a noble describe it? A farm hand? A foreigner?
Think about how people from the cultures in your world would insult each other. What kind of slurs would they use?
For instance, in the country of Maezam, to call someone “Alidaran” (a country to the west) means they are childish and unsophisticated. To call someone “Autermehran” (a country to the east) means they are putting on an affectation that is over-the-top. Just knowing that can tell you interesting things about Autermehrans, Alidarans, and Maezamis.
Even for “authors” from the same culture, think about quirky sub-cultures. How would a priest from a remote village write about a big city or how would the captain of a mercenary troop describe the regular army?
So, as horrible as it seems, what I’m really saying here, is that sometimes biases and stereotypes can be your friend. Keep your etic omniscient narrator, but add in some emic voices to your lore. It’ll give your worlds depth, and may just help you learn more about your world than you ever realized you knew.
If nothing else, you may get a couple of NPCs out of it, and it’ll likely be more fun to read.
Photo by Matthew Fassnacht, https://unsplash.com/photos/eBbRSsV4JqU
