Brush conversation between maritime officials and foreign seafarers in drifting records in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century East Asia
Chapter in an edited book (author)
Full Text
Digital Object Identifier (DOI) DOI for CUHK Users |
Altmetrics Information
.
Other information
AbstractThe adjacent polities China, Japan and Korea have long coastlines. Their coastal regions are vulnerable to stormy weathers and ferocious typhoons especially in summer. Plenty of shipwreck incidents were recorded in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Written by local maritime officials in Sinitic, such records often contain verbatim transcripts of brush conversations with distressed seafarers with whom no shared spoken language could be found. That notwithstanding, transcultural communication was made possible by the use of writing-mediated Sinitic brush-talk 漢文筆談, giving specific answers to wh-questions like who, what, why and how (many/much). For serious shipwreck incidents, detailed and formal reports plus proposed action were required and addressed to a senior scholar-official or, in some cases, the Emperor (in Qing China) for approval. By contrast, reports meant for local archiving purpose would be less formal and loosely structured. In terms of lexico-grammatical resources, ‘drifting brush-talk’ 漂流筆談 records were typically characterized by an admixture of written and vernacular elements. This chapter exemplifies some of these published records in Japan and Korea. Content analysis shows that, where interpreting service was unavailable, the seafarers’ stories and perspectives depended heavily on the literacy level of the seafarer(s) engaged in brush(-assisted) conversation.
All Author(s) ListMatsuura Akira, Reijiro Aoyama
All Editor(s) ListDavid C. S. Li, Reijiro Aoyama, Tak-sum Wong
Edition1
Book titleBrush Conversation in the Sinographic Cosmopolis: Interactional Cross-border Communication using Literary Sinitic in Early Modern East Asia
Series TitleRoutledge Studies in the Early History of Asia
Year2022
Month4
PublisherTaylor and Francis
Place of PublicationLondon
Pages89 - 110
ISBN9780367499402
eISBN9781003048176
LanguagesEnglish-United Kingdom