Cultural Conflicts and Reconciliation between China and America: A Study of The Joy Luck Club开题报告

1. 研究目的与意义

The Joy Luck Club , the best-selling novel of Amy Tan concentared on the relationships between mother and daughter under the different culture background. It committed to the global vision of cultural collisions and integration, and analyzed the differences between Chinese and American cultures. The world is entering into a historic process of #8220;civilization conflicts#8221;. The problem people have to face is the way to view the conflicts. In the process of globalization and multculturalism, the clutural shocks and conflicts are inevitable. Therefore, it is of great importance to conduct the research on intercultural communication. Everyone has to renew the view of intercultural communication, cultivate stong ability of intercultural communication, and learn the excellent cultures from all over the world without denying their own. In addition, people from different cultural background can understand and respect other culture well, building a hamonious relationship in the global village.

2. 研究内容和预期目标

this paper will study the conflicts and reconciliation between mother and daughter in the joy luck club from the perspective of conceptual culture and intercommunication approach. conceptual culture includes the family culture, religious beliefs , social customs and so on.

according to the comparative analysis of conflicts between mothers and daughters in these aspects, this thesis will explore the causes beneath the conflicts and explicate the reason for the fusions. meanwhile, it will investigate the strategies of avoiding those cultural misunderstandings and conflicts for further communication and cooperation.

3. 国内外研究现状

In America, scholars who study Tan`s works includes the white, Chinese American and other races. Those studies are divided into two kinds. The first is social gender, which is based on the rise of American woman writers of rare races. In the studies of feminity and feminism, woman writers of rare races are analyzed as a group individually. Those studies analyze those woman writers` narrative strategies and verbal intentions through their languages in works. In Marina Heung`s essay #8220;Daughter-Text/Mother-Text: Matrilinrage in Amy Tan`s #8216;Joy Luck Club#8217;#8221;(1993), she said that The Joy Luck Club is constructed with neither causal nor linear sequence, which is totally different from traditional ones. The reader`s comprehension plays a siginificant role in integrating all the stories in The Joy Luck Club. The second is race, which has many branches including history, literature, interculture, etc. The problem investigated refers to the ethnic relationship and life condition of American society. Tan`s orientalized discription is criticized by some reviewers. Sau-ling Cynthia Wong is one of them. In his #8220;#8216;Sugar Sisterhood#8217;: Situating the Amy Tan Phenomenon#8221;, he argues that #8220;the #8216;Amy Tan phenomenon#8217; must ultimately be situated in quasi-ethnographic, Orientalist discourse#8221;(Wong 1995:181).

The domestic studies on Tan`s novels center around the following aspects. First, the mother-daughter relationship. Zhang Ziqing explained his point on the conflicts between generations resulting from the generation gap and American-China differences in his #8220;Sino-America Cultural Cultural Exchang in Chinese American Literature#8221; in Foreign Literature Review in 1996. Second, the confrontation between Chinese culture and American culture. Cui Wansheng contributed the mther-daughter conficts to the cultural misunderstandings between Chinese and Americans in his article #8220; A Brief Introduction to and Comment on the Chinese American Writer Amy Tan#8217;#8221;(1997). The last is application of Chinese cultural elements in the novel. Some scholars criticized Tan`s misleading the west by giving them a wrong image of Chinese culture in The Joy Luck Club, like Wang Meng`s #8220;China and The Chinese in Fiction and Cinema#8221;(1999). The studies above only see cultural conflicts between Chinese and American cultures instead of Tan`s contribution to cultural communication and multiculturalism. There isn`t a summary research about the cross-cultural factors in The Joy Luck Club. This paper will analyze the detailed reasons of conflicts and reconciliation between China and America. Meanwhile, it will investigates the strategies of conflicts for better intercultural communication.

4. 计划与进度安排

1.introduction

2.literature review

2.1 the related studies of the joy luck club

5. 参考文献

[2]melendy,h.brett. the oriental americans[m]. new york: twayne publisher, 1972.

[3]nelson,e.s. asian american novelists[m]. westport. conn: greenwood press, 2000.

[4]tan,a. the joy luck club[m]. new york: ivy books, 1989.