The emic/etic concept was developed by the famous linguist Kenneth L. Pike, who first introduced the terms into linguistics and anthropology in 1954. The well-known anthropologist Marvin Harris picked up the concept in the 1960s and modified it to develop his own theory in anthropology, called Cultural Materialism. If Pike popularized the terms emic and etic in linguistics, it was Harris who entrenched them forever into anthropology. But Harris didn’t use the concept in quite the same way. Pike and Harris are quite different in theoretical perspective: Pike the linguist, Harris the anthropologist; Pike the theist, Harris the naturalist. Though they both share an emphasis on human behavior, Pike takes an idealist concept of culture, while Harris holds to a materialist concept of culture. Pike's tagmemics was developed in the 1950s as a way of analyzing human languages; Harris's cultural materialism was developed in the 1960s as a way of understanding and interpreting human culture. How could these two scientists with such different approaches--theories not even within the same discipline--come to use the same concept as a major tool in their theories?
By the 1980s, the confusing differences in the way these two scholars were using emics and etics was crying for discussion. Thus, In November of 1988 Pike and Harris publicly debated their differing uses of the emic/etic concept. This four-hour debate was conducted before an audience of 600 scholars at a special Invited Session organized by Thomas Headland at the 87th Annual Meeting of the American Anthropological Association, in Phoenix, Arizona. Five discussants participated as panelists in that debate: Dell Hymes, Roger Keesing, James Lett, Gerald Murray, and Nira Reiss.
In 1990 Sage Publications published the proceedings of that debate in a book titled EMICS AND ETICS: The Insider/Outsider Debate. The book received numerous positive reviews, including reviews in Contemporary Sociology: An International Journal of Reviews 1991; Australian Journal of Linguistics 1991; The Journal of Asian Studies 1991; American Anthropologist 1992; Guowai Yuyanxui [Linguistics Abroad], 1992 [published in Beijing]; Man 1992; History of the Human Sciences 1992; Discourse and Society 1992; Journal of American Folklore 1992; Missiology 1993; Reviews in Anthropology 1993; Semiotica 1993; Contributions to Indian Sociology 1993; Philosophy of the Soc Sciences 1993; and Journal of Cross Cultural Psychology 1994.
| Table of Contents | The Table of Contents of the 14 chapters. |
| Preface | This presents the purpose and goal of the book, and a short review of each chaper. |
| Introduction: Defining Emics and Etics and Harris and Pike | In this introductory chapter, Headland reviews the historical development of the emic/etic concept from linguistics to anthropology and then to its widespread use in other academic disciplines. |