Empirical Criticism
Literary Criticism as taught and practiced in universities is largely if not entirely, a matter of argument, opinion, and observation. Put otherwise, literary criticism seldom resorts to testing any hypothesis in anything like ways prescribed by the scientific method.
If nowhere else, empirical criticism should be possible with respect to rhetoric, the art of persuasion. David Everding in the 1990’s established that student negotiators in Japan grant negotiating success differently than American student negotiators.
Specifically, Japanese negotiators who hold back and are not recognized for any specific negotiating strategy suffer strong defeats in negotiation. This ”wall-flower effect” is much milder among American negotiators.
This result suggests the literary possibility that American writers can be more indirect or undirected in their persuasive techniques than can Japanese writers. Perhaps European literature also demands more heavy persuasive techniques whether in Ibsen, Chekhov, or Moliere.
Equally, the complex Everding results suggest that much simpler literary hypotheses are open to empirical investigation.
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