Delaney Schlesinger-Devlin

Academic Advisors: Jennifer Grubbs, Amy Osborne, Cary Campbell

Co-op Advisor: Richard Kraince

Co-ops:
Therapeutic Community Specialist Camphill Copake | Copake, New York
Interim Assistant Director El Papalote Inclusive Child Development Center | El Paso, Texas
Therapeutic Assistant Estia Agios Nikolaos | Galaxidi, Greece
Caregiver | Ligety, France                                                                      

Additional Campus Involvement: Student Representative on College Council (2020-2021), Comcil CoChair (2021-2022)

Languages: French

City:  West Lafayette, IN

Email: dschle66@antiochcollege.edu
 

That Strange New Word: A History of Empathy in Ohio

This paper aptly weaves together psychological understanding of empathy through a linguistic anthropological analysis. Empathy is conceptualized as the act of understanding another person’s experience by imagining oneself in that other person’s situation. It is if they are actually experiencing what the other person is experiencing while not actually doing so (Myers & Hodges, 2013). Central themes that are unpacked in this paper include: interpersonal and intrapersonal development, social influences, and developmental models of affect. Through archival research using newspapers, the analysis contributes to the growing discourse focused on the development of language in a historical frame. The distinct deployment of critical discourse analysis used here interrogates the ways in which empathetic language was used and understood. The research is guided by several focused questions: What is the social significance of the word “empathy” in print journals? What is the definition of empathy presented as in different contexts? How does the location and reader base of Ohio newspapers affect how the use of “empathy” is perceived? These questions lead the researcher to focus not only on the changes to the definition of empathy, but also of the positive and personal development of the word empathy to oneself.