Dictionary

emic en · ADJ

Pronunciation

• /ˈiːmɪk/

Etymology

Coined by American linguist Kenneth Pike in 1954 from phonemic. * Kenneth Lee Pike (1982), Linguistic Concepts: An Introduction to Tagmemics, page 44: “Generalizing from phonemics, I coined the term emic in 1954.”

Meanings

1. Of or pertaining to the analysis of a cultural system or its features from the perspective of a participant in that culture.
   • A useful example of the emic-etic distinction may be made by comparing the concept “waves on the ocean or sea” from the perspective of a European American with that of a Truk Islander […] The proposed etics here might be that both cultures understand the use of waves as vehicles for surfing and as movement reflecting the transfer of energy […] certain differences, or emics exist, for European Americans the waves may be sources of beauty — the Truk Islander has learned to use them […] as a road map. 1996, Advanced Methodological Issues in Culturally Competent Evaluation for Substance Abuse Prevention:
   • In contemporary Anglophone usage, the term 'dhow' has come to refer generically and exonymically to traditional wooden vessels of the western Indian Ocean, whatever their particular forms or emic classification. 2015, John P. Cooper, Dionisius A. Agius, Tom Collie, Faisal al-Naimi, “Boat and ship engravings at al-Zubārah, Qatar: the dāw exposed?”, in Proceedings of the Seminar for Arabian Studies, volume 45: Papers from the forty-eighth meeting of the Seminar for Arabian Studies held at the British Museum, London, 25 to 27 July 2014 (2015), →ISSN, pages 35–47:

Forms

Coordinates

etic

Deriveds

emicness · emically

Translations (13)

pt émico (linguistic units) · es émico (analyzing a culture from inside) · pt êmico (analyzing a culture from inside) · pt émico (analyzing a culture from inside) · nl emisch (analyzing a culture from inside) · ca èmic (analyzing a culture from inside) · pt êmico (linguistic units) · de emisch (analyzing a culture from inside) · pl emiczny (analyzing a culture from inside) · pl emiczny (linguistic units) · el ημικός (analyzing a culture from inside) · es émico (linguistic units) · sv emisk (analyzing a culture from inside)