Empathy
Hello, I’m SuYeon Kim, and my presentation part is empathy, which is on pages 164 to 166. Before I go into empathy, I will explain the relationship between language and society. The human beings are social animals, and language is the crucial means of forming the bonds of society. We all live in a process of reaching out from ourselves to others, which is called transaction, and the main tool of achieving this process is language. There are many transactional variables such as imitation, empathy, extroversion and so on, and among them, I am going to cover empathy more specifically.
Empathy is described as the process of putting yourself in other’s position to understand what they’re thinking and feeling. So, it may be the major factor to live in harmony with each other. Of course, language is the primary way of empathizing, but we have to remember that nonverbal communication such as eye contact or facial expressions is also an important means of empathizing.
We tend to confuse sympathy and empathy. These two words are similar in meaning, but they are not the same. With sympathy, you feel for the person. It means that, if other are placed in a difficult situation, you can be sorry for them or have pity on them. But, you don’t specifically understand what they’re feeling, and you don’t necessarily feel their feelings. So, you don’t have to objectify their position, because what you do is just having compassion for them without exact knowing what they’re feeling. On the other hand, empathy can be described as feeling with the person. You should notice the distinction between for and with. Empathy is much more active process of understanding and feeling another’s feelings together. So, in this process, you objectify their position so that you are placing yourself in that person’s place.
For example, let’s suppose that your friend calls you and cries saying she broke up with her boyfriend. But, if you’ve never had a boyfriend or a girlfriend before, you wouldn’t
Empathy is described as the process of putting yourself in other’s position to understand what they’re thinking and feeling. So, it may be the major factor to live in harmony with each other. Of course, language is the primary way of empathizing, but we have to remember that nonverbal communication such as eye contact or facial expressions is also an important means of empathizing.
We tend to confuse sympathy and empathy. These two words are similar in meaning, but they are not the same. With sympathy, you feel for the person. It means that, if other are placed in a difficult situation, you can be sorry for them or have pity on them. But, you don’t specifically understand what they’re feeling, and you don’t necessarily feel their feelings. So, you don’t have to objectify their position, because what you do is just having compassion for them without exact knowing what they’re feeling. On the other hand, empathy can be described as feeling with the person. You should notice the distinction between for and with. Empathy is much more active process of understanding and feeling another’s feelings together. So, in this process, you objectify their position so that you are placing yourself in that person’s place.
For example, let’s suppose that your friend calls you and cries saying she broke up with her boyfriend. But, if you’ve never had a boyfriend or a girlfriend before, you wouldn’t