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.

该项目培训了一名研究生进行经验基础科学研究的方法，探讨了社会关系是如何由不同社会和写作系统的书面文本的材料和视觉组成部分来调节和定义的。关于文本实践的现有比较研究集中于字母写作系统，例如英语，它们代表单个语音的顺序。这项研究在考虑到世界上广泛的非字母系统（例如象形文字和象形文字的系统）方面往往较弱，这些系统借鉴了书面字符与事物的视觉相似之处。将书面文本作为材料进行调查，视觉媒体将加深我们对写作和阅读如何塑造社会关系的理解，尤其是在使用（或曾经使用过）非字母写作的社会中。鉴于世界各地的数字媒体中视觉上富裕文本的作用越来越大，研究结果对于以最广泛的意义理解视觉设计特别重要，对美国和其他地方的视觉设计实践的影响尤其重要。通过15个月的民族志和档案研究，凯瑟琳·迪米默（Katherine Dimmery），凯瑟琳·迪米格（Katherine Dimmery），在许多人的企业中，在许多属性中，都可以探索人类/材料的监督。面对面的互动，例如具有对话性紧急质量。符号学的物质方法倾向于分析物质如何调节人类的社会形式。为了测试这种理论假设是否存在，该项目在纳克西（Naxi）中看起来是文字实践，纳克西（Naxi）是西南中国农村地区少数民族以其象形文字写作系统而闻名的。 NAXI写作系统（以及IT记录的濒危语言）对于分析文本实践很重要，因为与西方写作系统不同，在拼字法和语音之间建立联系以象征性地表示，该象形系统基于视觉相似性（或标志性）在拼字元素和物理对象之间建立了参考。该项目着重于持续的撰写言论语音代表的转变，旨在了解（1）如何在中国的“巨大鸿沟”中传播纳克西文字实践，并将其传播到现在； （2）在此期间，西南和中国在西南部的存在如何促进了语音化，以及（3）这些变化如何为现有的社会和人格形式带来问题。该项目的关键方法是对传统民族志参与者观察的详细说明，涉及遣返北京Minzu大学档案中的1949年以前的纳克西文本的副本，回到纳克西（Naxi）社区Baidi的居民，并与BAIDI居民使用文本进行协作。这项工作应产生有关旧文本以及它们重新融入当代生活的数据。此外，当前使用中用文本将在页面上翻译，使用并记录在摄影上，最终生成档案和使用中文本的数据库。该项目将有助于理解书面文本塑造社会关系的多种方式，并为您提供追踪1949年后的社会转变的视角，从而在中国农村的少数民族人口中进行社会转变。通过与密歇根大学的Deep Blue Archive合作使项目的数据库在线提供，该研究为未来的研究人员提供了详细的记录。