L’écriture empathique en sociologie

This article examines some of the linguistic or rhetorical methods often used in so-called comprehensive field work, especially when the group under study is at the bottom of the social hierarchy. The empathetic relationship with the respondents is a means of knowledge for the sociologist. The empathetic attitude expressed in the text is, for its part, information, little articulated, on the author: on his way of understanding the participants, events, etc. The processes used are similar to those used by a novelist to represent the characters in his story. They distinguish between the central and the ancillary drama elements. They express the author’s closeness to his heroes, focus attention on their lived world and their humanity. They sensitize the audience, often to the risk of impoverishing this humanity.