The Joy Luck Club

joyHigh-context Cultures and Low-context Cultures The Joy Luck Clubexplores the clash surrounded by Chinese gloss and American goal. One look of understanding the difference is to look at communication in these cultures. Chinese culture can be classified as a high-context culture and American culture as a low-context culture. First I will define these terms, then explain the significance of these two categories, and finally bind them to The Joy Luck Club. * Cultureis the way of living which a group of the smashing unwashed has developed and transmitsfrom single generation to the next.It includes concepts, skills, habits of thinking and acting, arts, institutions, ways of relating to the world, and agreement on what is significant and necessary to know. Race, ethnicity, class, and gender atomic number 18 heathenish creations they derive their essences from the culture. * Contextis the whole situation, background, or environment connected to an event, a situation, or an pers on. * Ahigh-context cultureis a culture in which the individual has internalized meaning and study, so that little is explicitly stated in written or spoken messages.In conversation, the attender knows what is meant because the expresser and listener share the same knowledge and assumptions, the listener can piece together the speakers meaning. China is a high-context culture. * Alow-context cultureis one in which information and meanings are explicitly stated in the message or communication. Individuals in a low-context culture put up explanations when statements or situations are unclear, as they oftentimes are. Information and meaning are not internalized by the individual but are derived from context, e. . , from the situation or an event. The United States is a low-context culture. High-context Cultures In a high-context culture, the individual acquires heathen information and meaning from obedience to authority, through observation and by imitation. To acquire knowledge in this way and to internalize it, pincerren must be carefully trained. High-context cultures are highly stable and slow to qualifying, for they are root in the ult one example is the Chinese practice of ancestor worship. They are also interconnected and cohesive cultures.In such cultures, the individual must know what is meant at the covert or unexpressed take the individual is supposed to know and to react appropriately. Others are expected to understand without explanation or particular(prenominal) details. Explanations are insulting, as if the speaker regards the listener as not knowledgeable or socialized complete to understand. To members of a low-context culture, speakers in a high-context culture seem to dialogue around a subject and neer to get to the point. The bonds among people are very strong in a high-context culture.People in authority are personally and literally responsible for the works of subordinates, whether in government, in business, or in the family . (In the U. S. , on the other hand, the world-wide practice is to find a fall guy or scapegoat who takes the blame for those with more fountain and status. ) In a high-context culture, the forms (conventional ways of behaving) are important the individual who does not observe the forms is perceived negatively the negative judgments for an individuals bad behavior may extend to the entire family.In embarrassing or awkward situations, people act as though nothing happened. Individuality, minor disagreements, and personality clashes are ignored, so that no action has to be taken. 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 consequences stand up, or because something better comes along.Consequently there is greater caution or even reluctance to initiate an undertaking or to give a promise. Chinese parent s may overlook a childs behavior, because they expect that the strong family tradition, which is based on ancestors, will cause the child ultimately to behave properly. The Clash of Low-context and High-context Cultures inThe Joy Luck Club In a low-context culture, as Edward T. Hall explains, Most of the information must be in the transmitted message in gild to make up for what is missing in the context (both internal and external). In a low-context culture change is rapid and easy bonds betwixt people are looser action is undertaken easily and can be changed or stopped once initiated. The arrests inThe Joy Luck Clubexpect their daughters to obey their elders and so hold by obedience, by observation and by imitation, as they did in China. Their elders did not explain. Because the get downs internalized values and knowledge, they seem to mount that knowledge is innate and that it is present in their daughters and only 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 own true nature. What was beneath my skin. Inside my bones (p. 40) to her, tie to her mother or filial comply is so deep it is in your bones (p. 41). But in this country, the mothers warnings, instructions, and example are not back up by the context of American culture, and so their daughters do not understand. They resent and misinterpret their mothers alien Chinese ways and beliefs.Similarly, the mothers do not understand why they do not have the kind of relationships with their daughters that they had with their mothers in China. The Joy Luck mothers were so close to their own 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 S uyuen, My mother and I never really understood one another.We translated each others meanings and I seemed to hear less(prenominal) than what was said, while my mother heard 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 infer 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 growing up in a family from a high-context culture and living in a low-context culture appear in other Asian-American writers. The vote counter of Maxine Hong KingstonsThe Woman Warrioris unable to decide 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 Talk Story O ne way of maintaining and instructing children in conventional ways which Chinese immigrants adopted is the traditional Chinese talk story.According to Linda Ching Sledge, the talk story served to redefine an fortify immigrant culture by providing its members immediate, ceremonial access to ancient lore it also retained the structure of Chinese oral wisdom (parables, proverbs, formulaic description, 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 function in this novel E. D. Huntley explains, Talk story enables women who have been socialized into keep mum for most of their livestheJoy Luckmothers, for instanceto reconfigure the events of those lives into acceptable public utterances painful experiences are recast in the language of folk tale c autionary reminders become gnomic phrases real life takes on the contours of myth. more than significantly, the act of performing talk story allows the story give outer to retain a comfortable distance 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 share with others the important stories that have shaped her into the person that she is. An issue for both mothers and daughters is finding 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 lives.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 dogged forever. The mothers do not question their identities, having come from a stable culture into which their families were integrated. Their daughters, however, are confused active their identities. Communication between American daughters and Chinese mothers.The mothers see their duty as encouraging and, if necessary, pushing their daughters to accompany therefore, they feel they have a right to share in their success (the Chinese view). The daughters see the mothers as trying to live through them and thereby preventing them from developing as separate individuals and from leading independent lives (the American view). The link 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 suffer loss, which ranges from time interval to abandon ment to rejection, in the mother-daughter relationship and in the male-female relationship. Sometimes the loss is overcome and the love re-established. Connection of the past and the present. The mothers past lives in China affect their daughters lives in this country, just as the daughters childhood experiences affect their identities and handsome lives.Power of language. Without proficiency in a common language, the Chinese mothers and American daughters cannot communicate. St. Clair cannot communicate with his wife, and so he changes her key out and her birth 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 unhapp y as theirs were. The American reality fulfilled their expectations in unanticipated and impossible ways. Another way of expressing this theme is The American Dream and its fulfillment. Chinese culture versus American culture. This conflict appears end-to-end 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.