Ethical Management of Speech Among Kazak Nomads in the Chinese Altai
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Ethical Management of Speech among Kazak Nomads in the Chinese Altai by U Gene Kim A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy (Anthropology) in the University of Michigan 2018 Doctoral Committee: Professor Judith T. Irvine, Chair Professor Webb Keane Professor Erik Mueggler Professor Douglas Northrop Ujin (U Gene) Kim [email protected] ORCID iD: 0000-0002-9670-2458 © Ujin (U Gene) Kim 2018 Acknowledgements This dissertation would not have existed without kindness and help from many people to whom I owe thanks. At Michigan, I thank Judith T. Irvine for being such a wonderful doctoral advisor. I am grateful to Webb Keane, Erik Mueggler, and Douglas Northrop for all their guidance, patience, and encouragement I needed to write this dissertation. I am also thankful for academic and practical advice as well as moral support from Michael Lempert, Barbra Meek, Alaina Lemon, Bruce Mannheim and Matt Hull during my training as a linguistic anthropologist. I thank Andrew Shryock, Tom Fricke, Conrad Kottak, Krisztina Fehervary, John Mitani, David Akin, Holly Peters-Golden, and Henry Wright for helping me survive the four-field anthropology program. I am grateful to Laurie Marx, Debbie Fitch, Cate McCraw, and Kari Beall during my Ph.D. years in the anthropology department. Outside the department, I also benefited greatly from studying with Chen Qinghai, Sarah Thomason, Yuen Yuen Ang, Gottfried Hagen, Ellen Poteet, Pär Cassel, and William Baxter. I thank Carol Stepanchuk at the Center for Chinese Studies for being so helpful and friendly. Liangyu Fu helped me find some of the rare materials that at first seemed utterly impossible to get. This research was funded by the Wenner-Gren Foundation and the University of Michigan Center for Chinese Studies. A Woodrow Wilson Foundation Charlotte Newcombe Fellowship funded the writing of this dissertation. I am especially thankful for many friends who have kindly taken time to read different chapters of this dissertation and their earlier versions. I thank, in particular, John Thiels, Jaymin ii Kim, Anna Johnson, Katie Dimmery, Eva-Marie Dubuisson, Sandhya Narayanan, Puninder Singh, Craig Colligan, Jonathan Devore, Hoda Bandeh-Ahmedi, Linda Takamine, Howard Tsai, and Sarah Sutter. I also thank the participants of the Linguistic Anthropology Lab meetings at Michigan, especially Georgia Ennis, Sheng Long, Huatse Gyal, Jin Li, James Meador, Prash Naidu, Mathew Schissler, Nikolas Sweet, Joshua Shapero, and Cheryl Yin. My training at the University of Chicago greatly helped me shape my research project. I thank Susan Gal for supervising my master’s thesis. I express my special thanks to Kağan Arık for being my mentor in Turkic studies, Kazak teacher, and good friend. I also thank my old teachers at Seoul National University, in particular, Kwang-ok Kim, Hodong Kim, and my MA advisor Hahn-sok Wang. A large part of this dissertation derives from my study with them. My sincere thanks go to Kayesoon Im, my undergraduate advisor at Hanyang University, for her continuing support for all these years. This dissertation would not have been possible without my Kazak teachers in various places. I thank Zhangyl Mugalym (Urumqi), Kağan Arık (Chicago), Fatima Moldashova (Bloomington), and Aliya Apaj (Almaty). In addition, I thank Aigerim Bogyrbayeva (Ann Arbor) for assisting the transcription of recorded Kazak conversation. I express my heart-felt gratitude to the people of Kyzyl Tas, although they remain anonymous in this work. I appreciated their hospitality, kindness, friendship, and willingness to share a great deal of their private lives, including gossip. I also thank my field assistant, “The Last Hunter of Kanas,” for helping me getting access to the field site. iii I am grateful to researchers at the Xinjiang Academy of Social Sciences, in particular, Shadyman Ahmetuly, Ku’lan Nijgymet, Liu Guojun, and Muktar Abdurusul. I thank Yenhu Tsui at Xinjiang Normal University for sharing his insights on Altai Kazak society. My fieldwork in Xinjiang was greatly helped by Jin Binghao at Zhongyang Minzu Daxue, Cao Xinwen at CYTS in Urumqi, and my old friend Kim Tai-u in Shenzhen. Lastly, I owe many thanks to my family. I am eternally grateful to my parents, my wife Heejin, and our daughter Kyusen for everything they went through as I was completing this doctoral project. iv Table of Contents Acknowledgements ii List of Tables vi List of Maps viii List of Figures ix Note on Transliteration xi Abstract xv Introduction 1 Chapter 1. A Brief History of Kyzyl Tas Village 18 Chapter 2. Grammar of Respect and Disrespect 36 Chapter 3. Ethical Speech in Language Socialization 97 Chapter 4. Hierarchy, Equality, and the Arts of “Soft Speech” 127 Chapter 5. “Hard Speech” and Joking Relations 178 Chapter 6. Dwelling in Words: Resonance of the Ethical 224 Conclusion 246 Appendix (Maps and Figures) 254 Bibliography 290 v List of Tables Table 1-1. Distribution of Major Kazak Clans in Altai 20 Table 2-1. Personal Pronouns 38 Table 2-2. Possessive Suffixes 39 Table 2-3. Predicative Suffixes – Type A 39 Table 2-4. Predicative Suffixes – Type B 39 Table 2-5. Predicative Suffixes – Type C 39 Table 2-6. Grammatical Repertoires of Honorifics 40 Table 2-7. ‘Speech Levels’ 44 Table 2-8. General Rule of Honorific Usage 45 Table 2-9. Special Rule in Honorific Usage 50 Table 2-10. Dichotomous Paradigm of “Soft” and “Hard” Signs 96 Table 4-1. Grammatical Repertoires of Honorifics 150 Table 5-1. Plain Second Person Forms 195 Table 5-2. Diminutive Nicknames 195 Table 5-3. Chinese Terms of Address 196 Table 5-4. Subject-Verb Disagreement 196 Table 5-5. Joking / Avoidance Contrast 200 vi Table 5-6. Joking / Non-Joking Contrast 200 Table 5-7. Stratification of Affinal Kin 220 vii List of Maps Map1. Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region 255 Map 2. Altai Prefecture in Ile Kazak Autonomous Oblast and Xinjiang 256 Map 3. Administrative Division of Ile Kazak Autonomous Oblast 257 Map 4. Administrative Division of Altai Prefecture 258 Map 5. Kaba County 259 viii List of Figures Figure 1. Kazak tent at a summer pasture at Teris-Akkan, Buwurshyn County 260 Figure 2. Replacing horseshoes 261 Figure 3. Ukan and Maksat’s migration to autumn pasture 1 262 Figure 4. Ukan and Maksat’s migration to autumn pasture 2 263 Figure 5. Ukan and Maksat’s migration to autumn pasture 3 264 Figure 6. Ukan’s autumn pasture 265 Figure 7. Kanat slaughtering a goat at his autumn pasture 266 Figure 8. Kanat’s autumn pasture 267 Figure 9. Kurban feast at the village head’s house 268 Figure 10. A camel wondering in a village road 269 Figure 11. Murat slaughtering a cow for the winter 270 Figure 12. Winter houses at Sawur Mountain 271 Figure 13. Nurzhajna and her aunt Nurgyjza at a meal 272 Figure 14. Nurzhajna cooking and boiling snow 273 Figure 15. A’dil driving camels at Sawur Mountain 274 Figure 16. Kajrat driving sheep at Sawur Mountain 275 Figure 17. Ku’la embroidering a syrmak 276 ix Figure 18. Men resting 277 Figure 19. Children playing 278 Figure 20. Shoveling sheep dung at Sawur Mountain 279 Figure 21. Summer pasture at Shargulagan 280 Figure 22. Murat’s summer log house at Shargulagan 281 Figure 23. Da’ken and her son Esbol at Shargulagan 282 Figure 24. Esbol sleeping in the tent 283 Figure 25. Altynbek showing Da’ekn his videorecorder at her tent 284 Figure 26. Murat and his son Esbol at Sajlybaj 285 Figure 27. Murat and Kanat smoking 286 Figure 28. Murat’s pasture at Sajlybaj 287 Figure 29. Late spring/early summer pasture at Sajlybaj 288 Figure 30. Da’ken milking a cow 289 x Note on Transliteration For transliteration of Kazak, I have devised my own system, using the Latin alphabet, as shown below. The rationale for using the present phonemic system is that it represents all the phonemes in the variety of Kazak spoken in Altai in a parsimonious way, without having to use any special symbols including umlauts. Kazak Transliteration Approximate Pronunciation Back vowels, unrounded: a similar to English “a” in “father” y similar to English “y” in “syringe” Back vowels, rounded: o similar to English “o” in “force” u similar to English “u” in “pull” Front vowels, unrounded: a’ similar to English “a” in “at” e similar to English “e” in “get” i similar to English “i” in “bit” ij similar to English “i” in “ski” Front vowels, rounded: o’ similar to German “ö” in Köln u’ similar to German “ü” in München Consonants: b (labial stop, voiced) similar to English “b” in “bit” xi p (labial stop, unvoiced) similar to English “p” in “pull” d (dental stop, voiced) similar to English “d” in “duck” t (dental stop, unvoiced) similar to English “t” in “top” g (velar stop, voiced) similar to English “g” in “go”; pronounced as an affricate before or after a back vowel k (velar stop, unvoiced) similar to English “k” in “key”; pronounced as an affricate before or after a back vowel z (dental fricative, voiced) similar to English “z” in “zebra” s (dental fricative, unvoiced) similar to English “s” in “sell” zh (alveopalatal fricative, voiced) similar to English “j” in “jam” sh (alveopalatal fricative, unvoiced) similar to English “sh” in “ashy” postvocally; elsewhere, similar to English “ch” in “chin” h (glottal fricative) similar to English “h” in “hot” m (labial nasal) similar to English “m” in “march” n (dental nasal) similar to English “n” in “nose” ng (velar nasal) similar to English “ng” in “sing” w (labial glide) similar to English “w” in “work” j (alveopalatal glide) similar to German “j” in “Johan” r (dental liquid) similar to Italian “r” in “Roma” l (dental liquid) similar to English “l” in “light” Using this system, I aim to represent Altai Kazak phonemically, rather than simply Latinizing the standard orthography (either the Cyrillic script used in Kazakhstan or the Arabic script used in Xinjiang).