Analyzing Narrative Empathy in Readers' Responses to Literature: A Taxonomy of Linguistic Evidence of Empathetic Responses

Abstract

[EN] The study of narrative empathy (i.e., readers’ sharing of characters’ perspectives and mental states) is getting increasing attention from theoretical and empirical perspectives. Recently, a number of empirical quantitative and qualitative studies have been conducted on empathy in literary reading. However, in qualitative studies where participants are not directly prompted to comment on empathy, the analysis of empathetic responses raises an important methodological problem; namely, determining whether and how there is evidence of empathy in readers’ verbal responses. This article proposes a way to operationalize, or make workable, what counts as evidence of narrative empathy by developing a taxonomy of linguistic evidence of empathetic responses that ranges from explicit to implicit evidence. The taxonomy is illustrated with data from a focus group study of readers’ responses to two short stories by Uruguayan author Eduardo Galeano. This research makes a methodological contribution by outlining a framework for the qualitative analysis of empathetic responses. At the same time, the article considers some caveats in the analysis of readers’ responses which may be valuable for those conducting empirical reader research in general because these issues ultimately influence the analysis and interpretation of the data, and thus, the results obtained. I argue for a shift in current scholarly discussion toward the issues that concern the actual analysis of reader responses without shying away from acknowledging the problems that arise in the process of analysis. This discussion should be of interest to scholars working in empirical narratology, empirical stylistics, and empirical literary studies.