Decolonising Literacy: The determinants of success for indigenous writing systems

几个世纪以来，殖民和传教力量为传统的不成文语言提供了书写系统（Hovdhaugen 1996）。罗马和西里尔字母不能很好地代表外国传教士和政府所使用的数百种语言中的许多语言（Sassoon 2004），没有适当考虑它们的音韵学、形态学或社会语言学情况。对此，许多土著人民发明了自己的文字系统（Schmitt 1980）。我建议调查导致世界不同地区（非洲、中国和印度）的母语人士发明的文字的非殖民化和成功的因素。所研究的系统（Mwangwego和Luo Lakeside； Bouyei， Yi和Zhuang； Kupia和Wancho）几乎都是为同样用拉丁字母书写的语言开发的。然而，拉丁字母被社区语言领袖们拒绝了，他们倾向于使用他们认为更能满足他们需求的书写系统。在社区参与对遏制语言濒危趋势变得越来越重要的时候，在技术使发明和使用新的书写系统变得更加可行的时候，理解是什么推动了社区发明的、非殖民化的书写系统的成功是至关重要的。我的研究将通过定性社会语言学、心理语言学和定量语法研究的结合来解决涉及的复杂问题。该研究扩展了卡希尔和赖斯（2014年）、琼斯和穆尼（2017年）、布鲁克斯和克里斯托（2010年）、凯利（2016年）和（2018年）对濒危语言正字法发展和濒危文字研究的研究。该研究的大部分内容还将涉及凯利（2019）对西非写作兴起的分析维度。此外，这项研究可能会对笔迹语言学领域做出贡献，并在一年两次的书面语言和读写协会研讨会和21世纪笔迹语言学会议上发表。下面，我首先概述我的研究假设，然后讨论我将研究的书写系统，然后回顾我的调查将使用的方法。

For centuries, colonial and missionary powers have provided writing systems for traditionally unwritten languages (Hovdhaugen 1996). The Roman and Cyrillic alphabets poorly represent many of the hundreds of languages for which foreign missionaries and governments have deployed them (Sassoon 2004), without due regard for their phonology, morphology, or sociolinguistic situation. Reacting against this, many indigenous peoples have invented their own writing systems (Schmitt 1980). I propose to investigate the factors that lead to the decolonisation and success of scripts invented by native speakers in different parts of the world: Africa, China, and India. The systems to be investigated (Mwangwego and Luo Lakeside; Bouyei, Yi, and Zhuang; Kupia and Wancho) were nearly all developed for languages also written in the Latin alphabet. Yet the Latin alphabet was rejected by community language leaders in favour of writing systems that they felt responded better to their needs. At a time when community engagement is becoming more crucial to stem the tide of language endangerment, and in which technology makes the invention and use of new writing systems more viable, it is crucial to understand what drives the success of community-invented, decolonised writing systems. My study will address the complex issues involved through a combination of qualitative sociolinguistics, psycholinguistics, and quantitative grammatical investigations. The study expands on Cahill and Rice's (2014), Jones and Mooney's (2017), Brookes and Crystal's (2010) and Kelly's (2016) and (2018) works on orthography development for endangered languages and the study of endangered scripts. Much of the study will also touch on Kelly's (2019) analytical dimensions of the rise of writing in West Africa. Furthermore, this study may contribute to the field of grapholinguistics and be presented at the biannual workshops for the Association for Written Language and Literacy, and the Grapholinguistics in the 21st Century Conference. Below, I first outline my research hypotheses, I then discuss the writing systems I will examine, and then review the methods my investigation will use.