Doctoral Dissertation Research: Analyzing Textually Mediated Social Relations across Writing Systems

博士论文研究：分析跨书写系统的文本介导的社会关系

• 批准号: 1628227
• 负责人: Erik Mueggler
• 金额: $ 2.38万
• 依托单位: Regents of the University of Michigan - Ann Arbor
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2016
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2016-08-01 至 2017-10-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1628227&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Doctoral; Dissertation; Research; Analyzing; Textually

This project, which trains a graduate student in the methods of conducting empirically-grounded scientific research, explores how social relations are conditioned and defined by the material and visual components of written texts across different societies and writing systems. Existing comparative research on textual practices focuses on alphabetic writing systems such as English, which represent individual speech sounds in sequence. The research has tended to be empirically weaker in its consideration of the world's vast array of non-alphabetic systems such as pictographic and pictographically-inclined systems, which draw on the visual resemblance of written characters to things. Investigating written texts as material, visual media will deepen our understanding of how writing and reading shape social relationships, particularly within societies that use (or once used) non-alphabetic writing. Given the increasing role of visually-rich texts in digital media throughout the world, research findings should be especially important to understanding visual design in its broadest sense, with implications for visual design practices in the U.S. and elsewhere.Through 15 months of ethnographic and archival research, Katherine Dimmery, under the supervision of Dr. Erik Mueggler of the University of Michigan, will explore whether human/material engagements can be shown to be inherently social, sharing many of the structural features of face-to-face interactions, such as having dialogic emergent qualities. Semiotic approaches to materiality have tended to analyze how materials condition human forms of sociality. To test whether this theoretical assumption holds, the project looks textual practices among the Naxi, a Tibeto-Burman ethnic minority of rural southwest China known for their pictographic writing system. The Naxi writing system (and the endangered language it documents) is important for analyzing textual practice because unlike Western writing systems build connections between orthography and speech to signify symbolically, this pictographic system establishes reference based on visual similarity (or iconicity) between orthographic elements and physical objects. Focusing on the ongoing shift of this writing towards phonetic representation of speech, the project aims to understand (1) how Naxi textual practices have been transmitted across China's "Great Divide" and into the present; (2) how increasing Western and Chinese presence in the southwest during that period contributed to phoneticization, and (3) how these changes pose problems for existing Naxi forms of sociality and personhood. The key method of this project, an elaboration of traditional ethnographic participant observation, involves repatriating copies of pre-1949 Naxi texts from an archive at Beijing's Minzu University back to residents of Baidi, a Naxi community, and pursuing collaborative translation with Baidi residents using the texts. This work should yield data on the old texts as well as on their re-integration (or not) into contemporary life. In addition, currently in-use texts will be translated, observed in use, and documented photographically page by page, ultimately to produce a database of archival and in-use texts. The project will contribute to understanding the diverse ways that written texts shape social relations, and offer lens through which to trace post-1949 social transitions among China's rural, ethnic minority populations. By making the project's database available online through collaboration with the University of Michigan's Deep Blue archive, the research contributes to preserving a detailed record for future researchers.

这个项目，它训练研究生在进行基于数学的科学研究的方法，探讨社会关系是如何调节和定义的书面文本的材料和视觉组件在不同的社会和书写系统。现有的文本实践的比较研究集中在字母书写系统，如英语，代表个人的语音序列。在考虑世界上大量的非字母系统，如象形和象形倾向系统时，研究往往在经验上比较薄弱，这些系统利用了书面文字与事物的视觉相似性。将书面文本作为材料进行研究，视觉媒体将加深我们对书写和阅读如何塑造社会关系的理解，特别是在使用（或曾经使用）非字母书写的社会中。鉴于视觉丰富的文本在全世界数字媒体中的作用越来越大，研究结果对于理解视觉设计在最广泛的意义上尤其重要，并对美国和其他地方的视觉设计实践产生影响。通过15个月的人种学和档案研究，凯瑟琳迪默里在密歇根大学的埃里克·穆格勒博士的监督下，将探讨人/物的参与是否可以被证明是固有的社会，分享许多面对面互动的结构特征，如具有对话的涌现素质。符号学方法的物质性倾向于分析如何条件的物质人类形式的社会性。为了验证这一理论假设是否成立，该项目考察了纳西族的文本实践。纳西族是中国西南部农村的一个藏缅少数民族，以象形文字书写系统而闻名。纳西文字系统（以及它记录的濒危语言）对于分析文本实践很重要，因为与西方文字系统不同，这种象形文字系统建立了正字法和语音之间的联系，以象征性地表示，这种象形文字系统建立了基于视觉相似性（或象似性）的参考。该项目着眼于这种书写方式向语音表达的持续转变，旨在了解（1）纳西语的文本实践如何跨越中国的“大鸿沟”传播到现在;（2）在这一时期，西方和中国在西南地区的日益增加如何促成了语音化，以及（3）这些变化如何对现有的纳西语社会性和人格形式造成问题。该项目的主要方法是对传统民族志参与观察的阐述，包括将北京民族大学档案馆1949年以前的纳西文本副本送回白地（纳西族社区）居民，并与白地居民合作翻译文本。这项工作应该产生关于旧文本的数据，以及关于它们重新融入（或不融入）当代生活的数据。此外，目前正在使用的文本将被翻译，在使用中观察，并逐页记录，最终产生一个档案和使用文本数据库。该项目将有助于理解书面文本塑造社会关系的各种方式，并提供透镜，通过它来追踪1949年后中国农村少数民族人口的社会转型。通过与密歇根大学的深蓝档案馆合作，该项目的数据库可以在线使用，该研究有助于为未来的研究人员保留详细的记录。