电影《喜福会》中反映的中美文化差异探究-英语（国际商务）毕业论文

Analysis of the Cultural Differences Between China andAmerica as Reflected in The Joy Luck Club 密级密级 学号学号111671 毕 业 设 计 论 文 毕 业 设 计 论 文 2015 年 6 月 26 日 北京 Analysis of the Cultural Differences Between China andAmerica as Reflected in The Joy Luck Club 院 系 部 院 系 部 外语系外语系 姓名 姓名 弭依彤弭依彤 年级 年级 11 级11 级 专业 专业 英语 国际商务 英语 国际商务 指 导 教 师 指 导 教 师 刘丽华刘丽华 教 师 职 称 教 师 职 称 副教授副教授 Analysis of the Cultural Differences Between China andAmerica as Reflected in The Joy Luck Club 北京石油化工学院 学位论文电子版授权使用协议 论文 电影 喜福会 中反映的中美文化差异探究 系本人在北京石油化 工学院学习期间创作完成的作品 并已通过论文答辩 本人系作品的唯一作者 即著作权人 现本人同意将本作品收录于 北京石油 化工学院学位论文全文数据库 本人承诺 已提交的学位论文电子版与印刷版论 文的内容一致 如因不同而引起学术声誉上的损失由本人自负 本人完全同意本作品在校园网上提供论文目录检索 文摘浏览以及全文部分浏 览服务 公开级学位论文全文电子版允许读者在校园网上浏览并下载全文 注 本协议书对于 非公开学位论文 在保密期限过后同样适用 院系名称 外语系 作者签名 弭依彤 学号 5120111671 2015年6月25日 Analysis of the Cultural Differences Between China andAmerica as Reflected in The Joy Luck Club I Abstract With the communication between different countries becoming more and more frequently cross cultural communication has become an unavoidable reality People from different countries and different cultural backgrounds get together Therefore there exist barriers during their communication Differences between Chinese and Western cultures have always been a main source of conflicts between local people and citizens of Chinese origin The Joy Luck Club is a good case in point It is written by Tan Amy who is one of the most famous Chinese American women novelists This novel attracts attention of academic circles both at home and abroad and lets them think about the problems emerging gradually in cross cultural communication The mothers and daughters in the movie grow up in different countries and receive different ways of education Thus there are many disparities in their ways of communication and thinking modes This paper aims to study the cultural differences between China and America as reflected in The Joy Luck Club The study based on the movie which is adapted from novel The Joy Luck Club and combined with the traditional cultural differences between China and America analyzes the conflicts between daughters and their mothers live in different cultural backgrounds and the underlying causes of the conflicts for the purpose of arousing people s attention to the cultural differences in cross cultural communication Keywords cultural conflicts The Joy Luck Club cross cultural communication mother daughter relationship Analysis of the Cultural Differences Between China andAmerica as Reflected in The Joy Luck Club II 摘要 随着国与国之间交流的日益频繁 跨文化交际已成为不可避免的现实 来自 不同文化背景的人们走到一起 交际必然会出现障碍 西方的中国移民和当地人 的矛盾很大程度上源于东西方文化的差异 喜福会 就是一个很好的例子 这 篇小说是谭恩美所写 谭恩美也是美国文学史中最重要的美籍华裔作家之一 这 篇小说引起了国内外学术界的关注 并且开始意识到逐渐浮现的跨文化交际中存 在的文化差异问题 电影中母女两代人由于生长在不同的两个国家 接受不同的 教育 因此交流 思维方式的不同必然会产生矛盾 本文以 喜福会 小说改编 成的电影为研究对象 并且结合了中美传统文化的差异 来分析不同文化背景下 的母女交流中产生的矛盾冲突及原因 从而引起人们对跨文化交际中文化差异的 重视 关键词 关键词 文化冲突 喜福会 跨文化交际 母女关系 Analysis of the Cultural Differences Between China andAmerica as Reflected in The Joy Luck Club III Contents Chapter 1 Introduction 1 1 1 The research topic 1 1 2 Significance of the study 2 1 3An overview of the thesis 2 Chapter 2 Conflicts between Mothers and Daughters in The Joy Luck Club 4 2 1Suyuan Woo and June s conflicts 4 2 2An mei Hsu and Rose s conflicts 5 2 3 Lindo Jong and Waverly s conflicts 6 2 4Auntie Ying Ying and Lena s conflicts 7 2 5 Summary 9 Chapter 3 The Differences between China and American Cultures Presented in the Movie 10 3 1 Different educational background 10 3 2 Different views on love and marriage 12 3 2 1 Different views on love 12 3 2 2 Different views on marriage 12 3 2 2 1 Chinese s view on marriage 12 3 2 2 2American s view on marriage 13 3 3 Different senses of value 13 3 4 Different ways of language expression 15 3 5 Summary 16 Chapter 4 Conclusion 17 4 1 Major findings 17 4 2 Implications 17 4 3 Limitations and suggestions for future research 18 References 19 Acknowledgments 21 Analysis of the Cultural Differences Between China andAmerica as Reflected in The Joy Luck Club 1 Chapter 1 Introduction 1 1 The research topic In the film The Joy Luck Club Amy Tan describes the conflicts between the mothers and the daughters This paper is based on the analysis of the movie to study the cultural conflicts between China and America Chinese academic circles begin to study The Joy Luck Club officially with the publication of the paper by Zhang Xianghua 1994 Zhang comments that The Joy Luck Club has achieved the level of an outstanding ethnic literature Cultural conflicts and fusion are always the important issues focused by people living in two cultures including Chinese American writers who live in American mainstream culture and the edge of national culture Cheng Aimin 2001 Besides Guan Jing 2005 adopting the theory of high context cultures and low context culture analyzes the phenomenon of cultural conflicts appearing in The Joy Luck Club The people in high context cultures can have a meaningful and ambiguous communication because they have a strong culture background but the people in low context culture must talk directly and concisely In addition the conflicts between mother and daughter is a show of generational gap it is also the two kinds of educational culture Li Jingjing 2011 71 72 As to exotic research from the 1970s American began to pay attention to Chinese American literature For example the American MLA publishes many books about minority literature and established the MELUS academic journals In 1989 many book reviews show up in some famous medium such as News Week Dorothy Wang s Wei ming zhi xiu sai and Orville Schell s book review Mu ai Shen ru gu sui published in The New York Times Since the 1990s critics at home and abroad including Amy Ling 1990 Marina Heung 1993 Walter Shear 1993 Stephen Souris 1994 Zenobin Mistri 1998 Patricia L Hamilton 1999 Alison Gee 2001 Zeng Li 2002 Zhang Ziqing 1996 LiuXiaohong 1998 Lu Wei 2000 Cheng Aimin and Zhang Ruihua 2001 Lin Xiaowen 2005 Chen Tingting 2006 Wang Heping 2007 and Zhu Shuzhen 2008 study the movie from different aspects and Analysis of the Cultural Differences Between China andAmerica as Reflected in The Joy Luck Club 2 all comment on The Joy Luck Club objectively and think highly of it Their studies are mainly about the mother daughter conflicts and the education background As to the cultural factors underlying the conflicts there is not much concern This paper will focus on the cultural differences between China and America reflected in The Joy Luck Club By comparing the differences in cultural backgrounds between them combined with the mother daughter relationship in the movie this paperemphasizestheroleplayedbyculturalelementsincross cultural communication 1 2 Significance of the study This paper puts emphasis on the cultural conflicts between China and America reflected in The Joy Luck Club through comparing the different cultural backgrounds and histories This paper combined with the conflicts between mother and daughter in the film to emphasis the importance of cultural differences In this era of rapid development more and more people from different places and with different cultural backgrounds get together During the communication they must pay attention to the cultural backgrounds Otherwise conflicts will appear like mothers and daughters in the movie According to the latest figure release of the 2011 American Study of Population Dynamics the Chinese Americans become the largest Asian American ethnic groups And in the past 10 years Chinese American population has increased by one third So this thesis has a realistic significance when more and more Chinese come across culture shocks in the foreign countries Besides through the study of the paper we can clearly know the cultural differences between China and America and can be more aware of the importance of cultural fusion 1 3An overview of the thesis The paper mainly consists of four parts The first part is an introduction of the thesis Chapter 1 shows a general survey of relevant studies Chapter 2 introduces the conflicts between the four pairs of mothers and daughters As a mother each of them Analysis of the Cultural Differences Between China andAmerica as Reflected in The Joy Luck Club 3 has a lot of problems with their daughters Obviously the conflicts are caused by mothers and daughters generation gaps and growing backgrounds Chapter 3 discusses the main reason why these conflicts occur The different education backgrounds different value systems different waysof language expression altogether cause these problems The author analyzes these aspects combined with the examples in the movie Then in Chapter 4 the paper concludes major findings and points out the limitations for further discussion and implications of this thesis Analysis of the Cultural Differences Between China andAmerica as Reflected in The Joy Luck Club 4 Chapter 2 Conflicts between Mothers and Daughters in The Joy Luck Club 2 1 Suyuan Woo and June s conflicts The main conflict between Suyuan Woo and her daughter lies in that the mother has too much expectation for her daughter while the daughter is not appreciated The following example can illustrate it You could be anything you wanted to be in America You could open a restaurant You could work for the government and get good retirement You could buy a house with almost no money down You could become rich You could become instantly famous The Joy Luck Club 1989 132 Of course you can be prodigy You can be best anything The Joy Luck Club 1989 132 Suyuan Woo has high hopes on her daughter and she hopes that her daughter could live up to her expectations Her daughter becoming a Chinese Shirley Temple is her first dream She takes her daughter to the image design salon but unfortunately it dosen t work Later she begins to find a new thing for her daughter to study When these failed Suyuan wants to let her daughter become a famous pianist although she is too poor to afford a piano Finally she manages to do some cleaning for a retired piano teacher and gets the opportunity for her daughter But her daughter doesn not want to live that way she wanted to be herself to be an ordinary person She goes against her mother many times We could see her dissatisfaction to her mother from the following paragraph Why don t you like me the way I am I am not a genius I can t play the piano And even if I could I wouldn t go on TV if you pay me a million dollars ibid 136 From the example we can see that Suyuan Woo truly has the high expectation on her daughter It reminds me of most Chinese mother Most mothers in Chinese want their daughters have a better future and force them to learn many things when they were children Even though they don t like it at all The mother Suyuan in the movie is Analysis of the Cultural Differences Between China andAmerica as Reflected in The Joy Luck Club 5 a traditional Chinese mother After the Piano conflicts their fight have lasted for twenty years They live with their own values until Jing mei comes back to China Then she begins to understand her mother 2 2An mei Hsu and Rose s conflicts The main conflict between An mei Hsu and her daughter lies in confidence The mother tends to be more confident and self esteemed as a Chinese The daughter however suffers a sense of inferiority being a Chinese She looks down on the Chinese wisdom and always neglects her mother s opinions Rose never believes in her own ideas so whenever her American husband asks for her opinion she would reply You decide or I don t care or Either way is fine with me with the belief that Chinese people have the views of the Chinese people while Americans have those of Americans and the latter seems to be better than the former However her husband Ted is not happy with this Ted criticizes that her wife Rose refuses to make decisions firstly which means she would shoulder none of the responsibilities to avoid any blame Rose s life is like this and then let us see how her mother s life is Her mother An mei Hsu has experienced a miserable childhood she hopes to educate her daughter with her own lesson When she is young she is very timid and dependent on her stepfather and it is her mother s death that awakens her and then she notices being independent with great courage counts more and refusing to be dictated by others would win more respect from others So An mei tells Rose that she should stand up bravely and learn to control the destiny of her own marriage Besides being a Chinese was not a shame and each man is irreplaceable But Rose turns a deaf ear to her at the beginning With this prejudice to Chinese when Rose s marriage comes across difficulties she prefers to confide them to her friends and even a psychiatrist rather than her mother which makes her mother very sad and depressed And they have a heated quarrel on this issue Although at first Rose looks down upon her mother s opinion and would not take her advice into consideration But in the end fortunately Rose adopts her mother s Analysis of the Cultural Differences Between China andAmerica as Reflected in The Joy Luck Club 6 advice She makes the decision to defend her marriage and refuses to sign the divorce agreement It is a big shock to Ted and he finds Rose s personality and confidence from her rejection and decides not to divorce her 2 3 Lindo Jong and Waverly s conflicts The main conflict between Lindo Jong and her daughter is that she shows off her daughter s achievements to others An expression of disgust appears on her daughter s face To get rid of the shadow of old China Lindo Jong comes to the United States to seek a better material life and more opportunities for her kids Lindo Jong hopes her children to be a perfect combination and she never expects that blending was impossible Lindo Jong hopes that her daughter could be outstanding and she tries to train her daughter to be a chess master Proud of her daughter s achievements she often shows it off to the outsiders which makes Waverly embarrassed After a heated quarrel their relationship begin to tense up Although after the Chess Conflicts Lindo Jong does not intervene in her daughter s life directly and even her marriage In Chinese tradition parents have the right to interfere with this matter for the good of their kids When Lindo Jong knows that Waverly is older than her boyfriend she feels negative to him because there is a Chinese saying would rather find a male ten years older to female one year older The Joy Luck Club 1989 146 Besides her husband is a white American so she is instinctively offensive as a Chinese American who could not really integrate into the mainstream culture She sticks to the ancient Chinese customs and ideas and she prefers tea to coffee When Waverly takes her first boyfriend home with the so called unique insight her mother finds that he lacks family responsibility fickle in love talks big and does not care about his wife etc She even throws shoes to him to show her dislike However Waverly could not understand her mother at all She believes it is her mother who ruins her first marriage so this time she is afraid that her mother might once again destroy her marriage For decades she never understood her mother and she even mixes up Taiyuan the birthplace of her mother with Taiwan because she has very little knowledge of China and she herself had been completely westernized There are some typical details to illustrate it Firstly Analysis of the Cultural Differences Between China andAmerica as Reflected in The Joy Luck Club 7 she tries her best to get rid of her mother s interference in free love Secondly she has accepted the Western way of life and cohabits with two boys Thirdly she askes her parents to respect her private life Calling her is a must before visiting her house 2 4Auntie Ying Ying and Lena s conflicts Themainconflictbetween Ying YingGuandLenaSt Clair isher misunderstanding of Chinese people On the one hand Lena knows little about her mother because her mother always has the horror and shack face she doesn t know why her mother always likes this and looks down upon her with the prejudice that all of the Chinese are poor For example in a store her mother shouted rudely at others which makes Lena very embarrassed and she lies to her mother who could not speak English Chinese people were not allowed to shop there Tan 1989 106 On the other hand Chinese superstition cast its shadow on her Her mother once tells her that her great grandfather punishes a person and suffers retaliation for his deed Since then China in her mind has become a pretty savage place and she even asks her mother Did they slice off his skin first Did they use a cleaver to chop up his bones Does he scream and feel all one thousand cuts ibid 102 Her mother is very angry with her misunderstanding of her great grandfather Naturally the four daughters try to identify themselves with American mainstream culture Both Rose and Lena marry Americans or what their mothers call Waiguoren They admire the Americans and their culture so much that they are willing to make sacrifice for their American husbands Waverly thinks that her mother s Chinese outlook would make her lose face when she attends her wedding so she conspires with her beauty parlor to dress up her mother in an American style The mothers in The Joy Luck Club intervene so much in their daughters life that the daughters feel their mothers love is not embrace but suffocation Waverly a chess prodigy thinks she has grown cleverer than her mother who gives her invisible strength Lena fears being drawn into her mother s madness and consoles herself by imagining others who have a life worse than hers Rose whose mother cannot let go of the memory of her son who is drowned And June believes it is her mother s impossibly high expectations that Analysis of the Cultural Differences Between China andAmerica as Reflected in The Joy Luck Club 8 make her feel that even today she is a failure On the other hand for mothers also cannot und