So this topic draws its inspiration from a pair of recent experiences that have dovetailed nicely with some of the very issues that I have been pondering every morning as I selfishly use the last of the pre-dawn hours to work on my dissertation: language use and language attitudes on the plateau. This post only scratches the surface of these issues. I don't, after all, want to steal my own thunder and write something here that will be essential to my dissertation.
The first is the Ethnography of Communication seminar/reading group I am leading. The ethnography of communication is a body of theories that has yet to make it to Western China in almost any way, shape, or form.* And so a group of students and I have been looking at some books together on our own time. It has lead to a number of fascinating conversations. From a selfish point of view, it has been great to listen on the conversations. People are getting to articulate levels of detail they knew existed but never thought about discussing. It's also simply wonderful basic level information for me. Yesterday, in discussing "categories of talk" we talked at one point about the differences between scolding (sdig pa), arguing/insulting as a precursor to fighting (skug), and cursing someone (dmod). Cool stuff. A few days ago, in an entirely different venue, language came to the fore of discussions again. My wife and I were meeting with a woman from her hometown for lunch. There was a fascinating moment in which this woman talked about reading bedtime stories to her son, in Tbtn, but finding it useless because her son couldn't understand them. I was confused. Her son speaks Tbtn with her. How could he not understand folktales read to him at night? Generations of children have figured out ways to understand folktales. Then she said something along the lines of: "Of course he can't understand them! I hardly understand them, classical Tbtn/written Tbtn is very difficult." This indicates an interesting and very basic problem for me: that T scholars in today's cities are intensely afraid of language loss, but their definition of the language that is worth learning is limited primarily to the written language. I tried to argue with this woman that folktales are meant to be oral, and to be spoken, so that she should tell the stories to her son, rather than read the stories to her son, but I don't think she was convinced. She seemed singularly unimpressed by the notion of preserving spoken language, or of the importance of spoken language. Either way, I think that these are both really fascinating. The attitudes suggested by the latter anecdote are particularly interesting to me. Why is it that oral Tbtn is not considered to be proper Tbtn? Why is that people think that speaking is not so necessary for preservation? Why is it that the very people who think that culture is dying out seem unconcerned with oral culture? For answers to that, read my dissertation (in two or *I should note that I do believe that a handful of people from the Qinghai Academy of Social Sciences are aware of this, but it's probably only a small proportion even of that august and learned body.
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About TimAs you can see elsewhere on this webpage, I conduct research on ethnic minorities in western China. This blog offers semi-academic musings on the minutiae of daily life out here--the sort of information otherwise destined for footnotes. Categories |