Visual Interactions in Early Writing Systems

写作是一种高度视觉化和可见化的现象。即便如此，书写系统研究从来没有利用过通过研究其视觉方面来提高我们对书写的理解的潜力。事实上，书写系统的视觉特征通常被视为更基本的属性的附带特征，比如它们编码语言的方式，这是它们分类中根深蒂固的一个方面。到目前为止，对文字系统的视觉元素和特性的研究往往是由学者们各自独立地进行的，他们对不同的材料群体采用不同的学科方法。更重要的是，对于写作的视觉方法应该是什么样子，应该遵循什么样的方法，或者我们应该用什么样的术语来谈论它们，目前还没有一个被广泛接受的蓝图。通过对五个具体的前现代案例研究的新研究，VIEWS将书写系统研究带入了一个新的方向。它探讨了一些重要的问题，比如写作和视觉文化之间的关系，以及人们与写作相遇和互动的方式。它的问题是，如果我们按照视觉属性对书写系统进行分类，并研究视觉和语言特征相互作用的方式，我们如何才能对书写系统有更细致的理解。它寻求建立创新的跨学科研究方法，将考古学、认知学、语言学、社会人类学和视觉文化方法相互对话，以便更全面地了解作为一种文化现象和实践的写作。通过创新的访问学者计划、一系列国际会议和建立一个将不同学科的学者聚集在一起的全球研究网络，VIEWS项目的开创性跨学科研究计划有可能改变我们研究和谈论写作的方式，从而增加其影响力。

Writing is a highly visual and visible phenomenon. Even so, writing systems research has never capitalised on the potential to enhance our understanding of writing through a study of its visual aspects. In fact, visual features of writing systems are usually seen as incidental to properties that are considered more fundamental, such as the way they encode language, an aspect strongly entrenched in their categorisation. Up to now, research on visual elements and properties of writing systems has often been conducted by scholars working in isolation from each other, pursuing different disciplinary approaches to different groups of material. Even more importantly, there is no widely accepted blueprint for what visual approaches to writing should look like, what methodology they should follow or what kind of terminology we should use to talk about them.Through new research on five specific pre-modern case studies, VIEWS takes writing systems research in a new direction. It probes important questions, such as the relationship between writing and visual culture, and the ways in which people encounter and interact with writing. It asks how we might reach a more nuanced understanding of writing systems if we were to categorise them by their visual properties, and investigate the ways in which visual and linguistic features interact. It seeks to establish innovative, interdisciplinary research methods, bringing archaeological, cognitive, linguistic, social-anthropological and visual-cultural approaches into dialogue with each other in order to pursue a more holistic picture of writing as a cultural phenomenon and practice. Increasing its impact through an innovative Visiting Fellowship Scheme, a series of international conferences and the construction of a global research network bringing scholars in different disciplines together, the pioneering interdisciplinary research programme of the VIEWS project has the potential to change the ways we study and talk about writing.