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

该项目对研究生进行基于经验的科学研究的方法进行培训，探索不同社会和书写系统中书面文本的材料和视觉成分是如何制约和定义社会关系的。现有对语篇实践的比较研究主要集中在字母书写系统，如英语，它代表单个语音的顺序。这项研究在考虑世界上大量的非字母系统时，在经验上往往较弱，例如象形文字和倾斜象形文字的系统，这些系统利用手写字符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世界各地的数字媒体中的作用越来越大，研究结果对于理解最广泛意义上的视觉设计尤其重要，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，Katherine Dimmery将在密歇根大学的Erik Mueggler博士的指导下，探索人/材料的参与是否可以被证明是内在的社交，分享面对面互动的许多结构特征，例如具有对话的涌现品质。物质的符号学方法倾向于分析物质如何制约人类的社会性形式。为了检验这一理论假设是否成立，该项目研究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，以象形文字著称。纳西文字系统(及其记录的濒危语言)对于分析文字实践很重要，因为与西方文字系统在拼写和语音之间建立联系以表示符号不同，这种象形文字系统基于拼写元素和物理对象之间的视觉相似性(或象似性)建立参照。该项目聚焦于这一书写向语音表达的持续转变，旨在了解(1)纳西文字实践是如何跨越中国的“大鸿沟”传播到现在的；(2)在那个时期西南部日益增多的西方和汉语是如何促进拼音化的；以及(3)这些变化如何给现有的纳西社交和人格形式带来问题。该项目的关键方法是对传统的民族志参与者观察进行阐述，包括将北京民族大学档案馆1949年前的纳西族文本的副本送回纳西族社区百度的居民，并利用这些文本与百度居民进行合作翻译。这项工作应该提供关于旧文本以及它们重新融入(或不融入)当代生活的数据。此外，目前正在使用的文本将逐页翻译、在使用中观察并以照片形式记录下来，最终形成一个档案和正在使用的文本数据库。该项目将有助于理解书面文本塑造社会关系的不同方式，并提供追踪1949年后中国农村少数民族人口社会转型的镜头。通过与密歇根大学的深蓝档案合作，使该项目的数据库在线可用，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.