The Imitation Game: On the Sociological Reconstruction of the Historical Semantics of "Imitation" with Text Mining Methods

模仿游戏：文本挖掘方法对“模仿”历史语义的社会学重构

• 批准号: 441096575
• 负责人: Dr. Ramy Youssef
• 金额: --
• 依托单位: Department of History and Art History
• 依托单位国家: 德国
• 项目类别: Research Fellowships
• 财政年份: 2020
• 资助国家: 德国
• 起止时间: 2019-12-31 至 2021-12-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://gepris.dfg.de/gepris/projekt/441096575?language=en
• 关键词: Imitation; Game; Sociological; Reconstruction; Historical

The research proposal is based on the observation of a significant conceptual change in the meaning and evaluation of “imitation” during the 18th century. Whereas imitation was previously seen as a way of stabilizing social order, it is increasingly interpreted as endangering a society in which guarantees of stability are paradoxically seen in novelties, deviations and singularities.The aim of this research project is to reconstruct the historical, linguistic and socio-structural conditions of this process of semantic change. Thus, it fulfills a desideratum of a more recent sociological discourse, which until now has primarily focused on implicit cognitive, affective, bodily and material aspects of everyday practices of imitation. While this discourse regards imitation rather as an ahistorical anthropological universal, "imitation" is also understood here as a historically variable concept, which decisively influences how a certain social behavior is observed and evaluated in a certain historical period. This approach not only allows for sociological conclusions about the long-term change of social structures. It also paves the way for a historically informed reflection on "imitation" as a basic sociological concept and, finally, for contributions to an interdisciplinary history of ideas on "imitation", which has so far rather been the subject of debates within the Humanities.Methodologically, the research project follows a systems-theoretical approach to semantic analysis. The focus is on exploring the interrelationship between the transformation of social structures on the one hand and semantics in the form of central concepts and key distinctions on the other. This approach is complemented by the application of explorative text mining methods, which are increasingly being used in conceptual history for the analysis of large text corpora.The research grant enables the applicant to learn the necessary programming skills for text mining methods in an interdisciplinary environment at Utrecht University. In addition, it facilitates international networking in the fast-growing field of Digital Humanities and the fulfilment of formal requirements for applying for an interdisciplinary DFG junior research group within the framework of the Emmy Noether Programme.

这项研究建议是基于对18世纪“模仿”的含义和评价的重大概念变化的观察。尽管模仿以前被视为稳定社会秩序的一种方式，但它越来越多地被解读为危及一个社会，在这个社会中，稳定的保证被矛盾地视为新奇、偏差和奇点。本研究项目的目的是重建这一语义变化过程的历史、语言和社会结构条件。因此，它满足了一种较新的社会学话语的愿望，到目前为止，社会学话语主要集中在日常模仿实践的内隐认知、情感、身体和物质方面。虽然本文把模仿看作是一种非历史的人类学普遍现象，但“模仿”在这里也被理解为一个历史可变的概念，它决定性地影响着特定历史时期对某一社会行为的观察和评价。这种方法不仅允许对社会结构的长期变化做出社会学结论。它也为对“模仿”作为一个基本的社会学概念进行历史知识的反思铺平了道路，并最终为关于“模仿”的跨学科思想史的贡献铺平了道路，到目前为止，“模仿”一直是人文科学内部争论的主题。重点是探索社会结构的转变与以中心概念和关键区别的形式表现出来的语义之间的相互关系。这一方法与探索性文本挖掘方法的应用相辅相成，探索性文本挖掘方法在概念史上越来越多地用于分析大型文本语料库。研究补助金使申请人能够在乌得勒支大学的跨学科环境中学习文本挖掘方法所需的编程技能。此外，它还促进在快速增长的数字人文领域建立国际网络，并满足在艾美诺特方案框架内申请成立一个跨学科的DFG初级研究小组的正式要求。