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

该项目旨在培养研究生进行实证科学研究的方法，探讨社会关系如何受到不同社会和书写系统中书面文本的材料和视觉成分的制约和定义。现有的文本实践比较研究主要集中在字母书写系统，如英语，它代表了顺序的单个语音。在考虑世界上大量的非字母系统（如象形文字系统和象形文字倾斜系统）时，这项研究往往缺乏经验。象形文字系统利用的是文字与事物在视觉上的相似性。研究书面文本作为材料，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，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球数字媒体中的作用越来越大，研究结果对于从最广泛的意义上理解视觉设计尤其重要，这对美国和其他地方的视觉设计实践具有启示意义。通过15个月的人种学和档案研究，Katherine Dimmery在密歇根大学Erik Mueggler博士的指导下，将探索人类/物质的接触是否可以被证明具有内在的社会性，分享许多面对面互动的结构特征，例如具有对话涌现的品质。符号学研究物质性的方法倾向于分析物质如何制约人类的社会形态。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字实践。纳西族是中国西南部农村的一个藏缅少数民族，以其象形文字系统而闻名。纳西族文字系统（以及它记录的濒危语言）对分析文本实践很重要，因为与西方文字系统不同，它在正字法和语音之间建立联系，以表示象征性，而这种象形文字系统在正字法元素和物理对象之间建立视觉相似性（或象似性）的参考。关注纳西族文字向语音表达的持续转变，该项目旨在了解(1)纳西族文字实践是如何跨越中国的“大鸿沟”并传播到现在的；(2)在这一时期，西方和中国在西南地区的存在如何促进了语音化，以及(3)这些变化如何给现有的纳西族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性观察的详细阐述，包括将北京民族大学档案中1949年前的纳西族文本的副本归还给白地（一个纳西族社区）的居民，并利用这些文本与白地居民进行合作翻译。这项工作应该提供有关旧文本以及它们重新融入（或不融入）当代生活的数据。此外，将对目前使用的文本进行翻译、观察和逐页摄影记录，最终形成档案和使用文本的数据库。该项目将有助于理解书面文本塑造社会关系的多种方式，并为追踪1949年后中国农村少数民族人口的社会转型提供视角。通过与密歇根大学深蓝档案馆的合作，该项目的数据库可以在网上获得，这项研究有助于为未来的研究人员保留详细的记录。

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.