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E-book Creating Standards : Interactions with Arabic script in 12 manuscript cultures

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Penilaian

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Manuscripts originate from literacy practices embedded in numerous social domains, such as education, administration, religion and trade. Expressed in spoken and written languages, various social activities prompt the development of organising principles and structures, which in turn serve as models for the agents and participants of literacy practices. The degree to which such organi-sing models may develop varies from lax to strict. The strict models of literacy practices are usually regulated by sets of standards. When a certain literacy event takes place – writing a letter, copying a poem or commenting on a canoni-cal text, for example – then the regulatory normative patterns (or their absence) may variously be reflected in the resultant manuscript. The size and form of the manuscript is one such indexical feature, the layout another, and the type and style of script and spelling conventions are yet another feature indicative of the degree of standardisation imposed on the scribe. If such features are examined in relation to each other rather than separately, and if the patterns of their relati-onship in one manuscript culture are compared to the patterns in other cultures, we may learn a great deal about the underlying forces of literacy and specifically about language in its relation to the manuscript medium. A holistic comparison of the sort in line with the stance of the first quote in this chapter would shift manuscript studies to a previously unexplored vantage point. We would not only understand which components of a manuscript culture were historically more impervious to stabilisation and standardisation, and which disfavoured variation, but we would also come close to big WHY questions. Why do some cultural models lead to totalitarian types of standardisation of writing, such as Western societies? Why do others keep on with limited stan-dardisation – strict in one social domain and lax in another? Such would be the cultures with fixed orthography and regulated reading of codified texts (e.g. the Qur’an) and non-codified writing practices in the languages or language varieties other than those of the codified texts. And why do the other cultural models exist without any standardisation? Or do such cultures exist at all? However promising a holistic comparison might sound, we are still far from that illuminating vantage point. It might in principle be feasible to carry out a study on the multiplicity of factors behind standardisation (or failure thereof) in one manuscript culture, but a comparative study of several cultures seems an enormous task. This is because in order to make the comparison typologically valid, we need to identify social domains related to manuscript production for each culture (by no means static), then study norms, prescriptions and codes in each identified domain. Only then will we arrive at substantiated observations about the standardisation factors in the history of a manuscript culture. However, to the best of my knowledge, no studies have tried to treat all the possible factors of standardisation in one manuscript culture holistically yet, let alone compa-rative cross-cultural studies. This is not surprising, actually. In Western socie-ties, the (positive) notion of a standard developed at the time of print, long after manuscripts ceased to be the prime medium of literacy practices. The manuscript age was seen as a pre-standard stage in the history of the development of written languages, this history culminating in standardised print culture.1 So the study of standardisation was in the areas of human activity where it was expected, which excluded manuscripts.The long history of successful attempts to eliminate variation in spoken and, especially, written European languages and to promote the primacy of a stan-dard led to scholarly frameworks with dismissive attitudes to variation in written texts (manuscripts). Up until sometime in the middle of the 20th century, lingu-ists considered textual variation in manuscripts as an uncomfortable situation resulting from ‘idiosyncratic formats, conventions and mistakes’, as expressed in the second quote in this chapter. Recognising variation as an important factor in understanding language in its spoken and written form and in literacy practices in general was a novelty in some disciplines in the 1970s and 80s, only recently gaining momentum in linguistics, sociolinguistics, literacy studies and manuscript studies.2 It may seem a truism that understanding variation is essen-tial for understanding what kills it, namely standardisation. But despite the deve-lopment of variation-oriented studies (and thus concerned with standardisation in one or another way) in linguistics, sociolinguistics, philology and generally in manuscript studies, little has been done so far to approach variation/standardi-sation phenomena holistically, involving interdisciplinary dialogue.

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Ketersediaan

Informasi Detail

Judul Seri

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No. Panggil

492.7 BON c

Penerbit

Berlin : De Gruyter., 2019

Deskripsi Fisik

334 hlm

Bahasa

English

ISBN/ISSN

9783110639063

Klasifikasi

492.7

Tipe Isi

text

Tipe Media

computer

Tipe Pembawa

online resource

Edisi

-

Subjek

Arabic

Info Detail Spesifik

-

Pernyataan Tanggungjawab

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Versi lain/terkait

Lampiran Berkas

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