The Joy Luck Club

joyHigh- circumstance Cultures and Low-context Cultures The gaiety pot federationexplores the clash amid Chinese nuance and Ameri merchant ship agri burnish. One demeanor of judgment the difference is to look at parley in these destinations. Chinese shade can be classified as a high-context culture and American culture as a low-context culture. First I leave behind define these terms, then explain the moment of these two categories, and finally apply them to The rejoicing Luck Club. * Cultureis the way of sprightliness which a group of people has demonstrable and transmitsfrom nonp atomic number 18il generation to the next.It includes concepts, skills, habits of thinking and guessing, arts, institutions, slipway of relating to the world, and agreement on what is significant and necessity to arse ab pop. Race, ethnicity, class, and gender atomic number 18 cultural inventions they take off their meanings from the culture. * Contextis the whole situation, backgr ound, or purlieu connected to an event, a situation, or an individualist. * Ahigh-context cultureis a culture in which the individual has interiorised meaning and learning, so that precise is explicitly verbalize in written or spoken meats.In conversation, the listener dwells what is meant because the vocaliser and listener shargon the same familiarity and assumptions, the listener can piece together the decl atomic number 18ers meaning. mainland China is a high-context culture. * Alow-context cultureis one in which in engineeration and meanings be explicitly express in the message or parley. Individuals in a low-context culture expect explanations when statements or situations argon unclear, as they often be. Information and meaning are non internalized by the individual but are derived from context, e. . , from the situation or an event. The joined States is a low-context culture. High-context Cultures In a high-context culture, the individual originates cultur al information and meaning from obedience to representation, through thoughtfulness and by imitation. To acquire companionship in this way and to internalize it, children must be carefully trained. High-context cultures are highly stable and slow to pitch, for they are rooted in the quondam(prenominal) one representative is the Chinese give of rootage worship. They are also unified and cohesive cultures.In such cultures, the individual must know what is meant at the covert or unexpressed level the individual is supposed to know and to react appropriately. Others are expected to encounter without explanation or specific details. Explanations are insulting, as if the speaker regards the listener as non knowledgeable or socialised enough to understand. To members of a low-context culture, speakers in a high-context culture viewm to remonstrate about a subject and never to get to the point. The bonds among people are very plastered in a high-context culture.People in au thority are personally and literally amenable for the actions of subordinates, whether in government, in business, or in the family. (In the U. S. , on the early(a) hand, the general practice is to find a fall computerized tomography or scapegoat who takes the blame for those with more(prenominal) power and status. ) In a high-context culture, the forms (conventional ship canal of behaving) are grand the individual who does non observe the forms is perceived detrimentally the negative judgments for an individuals bad behavior may ply to the entire family.In embarrassing or cumbrous situations, people act as though nonhing happened. Individuality, minor disagreements, and personality clashes are ignored, so that no action has to be interpreted. Taking action tends to be taken seriously, because once started an action must generally be completed. Individuals cant stop an action because they change their minds, because they develop another interest, because unforeseen conseq uences arise, or because several(prenominal)thing better comes along.Consequently there is niftyer safeguard or even reluctance to start an undertaking or to give a promise. Chinese parents may overlook a childs behavior, because they expect that the strong family tradition, which is based on ancestors, will cause the child at last to be involve properly. The Clash of Low-context and High-context Cultures inThe bliss Luck Club In a low-context culture, as Edward T. Hall explains, Most of the information must be in the contractable message in order to gear up up for what is missing in the context (both internal and external). In a low-context culture change is rapid and easy bonds between people are looser action is undertaken well and can be changed or stop once initiated. The drives inThe gratification Luck Clubexpect their daughters to obey their elders and so learn by obedience, by observation and by imitation, as they did in China. Their elders did not explain. Becaus e the get under ones skins internalized values and knowledge, they seem to assume that knowledge is innate and that it is present in their daughters and totally has to be brought out or activated.The internalization is so psychologically complete and so much a part of the mothers identities that they speak of it as physical. Am-mei, for instance, sees in her mother my induce true nature. What was beneath my skin. Inside my mug up (p. 40) to her, connection to her mother or filial respect is so deep it is in your bones (p. 41). But in this country, the mothers word of advices, instructions, and example are not supported by the context of American culture, and so their daughters do not understand. They resent and misinterpret their mothers extraterrestrial Chinese ways and beliefs.Similarly, the mothers do not understand wherefore they do not have the kind of familys with their daughters that they had with their mothers in China. The Joy Luck mothers were so close to their rec eive mothers that they saw themselves as continuations of their mothers, like stairs. The communication problems that arise when one speaker is from a high-context culture and the other is from a low-context culture can be seen in the conversations of June and Suyuen, My mother and I never substantially soundless one another.We translated each others meanings and I seemed to unwrap less than what was said, while my mother hear more (p. 27). June looks for meaning in what is stated and does not understand that her mother omits important information because she assumes her daughter knows it and can take off it her mother, on the other hand, looks for meaning in what has not been stated and so adds to what has been stated explicitly and comes up with meanings that surprise her daughter.The difficulties of ripening up in a family from a high-context culture and living in a low-context culture appear in other Asian-American writers. The cashier of Maxine Hong KingstonsThe Woman War rioris unable to take root whether figures she sees are real persons or ghosts, whether stories she is told are true or fiction, what the meaning of those stories is, why she is told the stories, and whether an event really happens or is imagined. The call down Story One way of maintaining and instructing children in traditional ways which Chinese immigrants pick out is the traditional Chinese talk novel.According to Linda Ching Sledge, the talk study served to redefine an embattled immigrant culture by providing its members immediate, ceremonial access to antique lore it also retained the complex body part of Chinese oral wisdom (parables, proverbs, conventional commentary, heroic biography, casuistical dialogue). In the talk-story the narrator expects the listener to grasp the point, which is often not stated (unlike the WesternAesops Fables). Tan adopts the Chinese talk story in the mothers warning stories to their daughters.The talk story serves another part in this n ovel E. D. Huntley explains, Talk story enables women who have been socialized into silence for roughly of their livestheJoy Luckmothers, for instanceto reconfigure the events of those lives into pleasing public utterances painful experiences are re habitus in the language of folk bosh cautionary reminders become gnomic phrases real life takes on the contours of myth. More significantly, the act of performing talk story allows the teller to retain a comfortable hold between herself and her audience.Thus, the storyteller manages in some fashion to maintain the silence to which she is accustomed, as well as to speak out and assign with others the important stories that have wrought her into the person that she is. An issue for both mothers and daughters is decision a voice, that is, finding a way to express the essential self. Themes inThe Joy Luck Club Identity. The stories tell of events which shape the identities of the mothers and daughters and give direction to their live s.Though David Denby is speaking of the movie, his description applies equally well to the novel, each story centers on a moment of creation or self-destruction in a womans life, the moment when her identity becomes fixed forever. The mothers do not question their identities, having come from a stable culture into which their families were integrated. Their daughters, however, are composite about their identities. Communication between American daughters and Chinese mothers.The mothers see their duty as encouraging and, if necessary, pushing their daughters to succeed therefore, they tint they have a right to share in their winner (the Chinese view). The daughters see the mothers as trying to live through them and thereby preventing them from developing as remove individuals and from leading independent lives (the American view). The join of the Chinese mothers and Chinese daughters. The Chinese mothers form a continuity with their mothers in China, a connection which they want to establish with their American daughters.Love, loss, and redemption. Throughout there exists what David Gates calls a ferocious love between mother and daughter both in China and in this country. But the women also project loss, which ranges from separation to abandonment to rejection, in the mother-daughter relationship and in the male-female relationship. Sometimes the loss is overtake and the love re-established. Connection of the past and the present. The mothers past lives in China run into their daughters lives in this country, just as the daughters childhood experiences affect their identities and adult lives.Power of language. Without proficiency in a common language, the Chinese mothers and American daughters cannot impart. St. Clair cannot communicate with his wife, and so he changes her name and her render date, taking away her identity as a tiger. Lena St. Clair mistranslates for her father and for her mother. Also, words have great power. Expectation and reality . The mothers have great hopes for their daughters their expectations for their daughters include not just success but also freedom.They do not want their daughters lives to be determined by a rigid society and convention, as in an arranged marriage, and made hard put as theirs were. The American reality fulfil their expectations in unanticipated and unacceptable ways. other way of expressing this theme is The American fancy and its fulfillment. Chinese culture versus American culture. This remainder appears throughout the novel, from the struggles of the mothers and daughters to Lena St. Clairs Chinese eyes and American appearance and Lindo Jongs Chinese face and her American face.