THE POLYPHONY OF NÜSHU: NON-WRITTEN ASPECTS OF CHINESE WOMEN’S CULTURE
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Abstract
During the last forty years of active study of nüshu culture, unique women’s script was the focus of the research and preservation, which is a natural phenomenon for the traditional graphocentrism of Chinese culture and academia. A corpus of texts, compilations, and dictionaries of nüshu provide sufficiently complete information about the characteristics of women’s script and the works it records. Also, much of nüshu research has been published from the point of view of grammatology, literary studies, phonetics, historical linguistics, sociolinguistics, ethnography, art studies, gender studies, etc. However, due to the tendency to “respect the written characters and neglect the spoken language” in the academic community, there is a significant gap in studying the musical, vocal, and performative features of authentic nüshu songs. This article draws attention to the non-written multimedia aspects of women’s language and its works and related unresolved issues in the decline and transformation of the “archaic” nüshu culture. Understanding the works and studying women’s script is only possible due to the knowledge of the dialects of the region of nüshu culture in southern Hunan. Jiangyong dialects are a unique hybrid that differs from the dominant Chinese languages of the region and surrounding areas. The phonetics of these words is the language of women’s script and an inseparable driving component of nüshu songs. In particular, the very mechanism of writing formulaic nüshu verses is dictated by established patterns of metre, rhyming tones, and their influence on the basic formulaic melody – the nüshu tune, according to which these texts are to be sung. Today, in the so-called post-nüshu era, women’s language is no longer a communication tool and is increasingly turning into an exotic phenomenon. The revitalization, preservation or further transformation of the nüshu culture remains the task of its heirs, but the authenticity of the “archaic” nüshu depends on conscious scientific approaches.
How to Cite
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“archaic” nüshu, women’s script, Jiangyong dialect, nüshu tune, nüshu songs, Chinese language
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