An Analysis Of Intercultural Conflict And Conflict Resolution In Cross-Cultural Families Reflected In Four Films

With the rapid development of the process of globalization, the worldis becoming smaller and smaller, which seems like a global village.People from different ethnics and countries communicate more and morefrequently like villagers. Human beings with the different culturalbackgrounds can encounter cultural conflicts in the process ofcommunication. Family as the basic social group in human life cannotexceed the differing cultural backgrounds. The conflicts between thefamily members of the cross-cultural families can be traced back to theircultural roots.Film as the bridge of communicating between cultures plays animportant role in improving intercultural communication. Fourrepresentative intercultural films, Pushing Hands, The Wedding Banquet,The Joy Luck Club and Saving Face are the context and content of thestudy. The basic approach adopted in this study is the context-analysisqualitative research method based on grounded theory. Guided by Edward T. Hall’s High-Context and Low-Context Culture Theory, Geert Hofstede’sCultural Value Dimension Theory, Ting-Toomey’s Face NegotiationTheory and related conflict resolution theory, this thesis explores andanalyzes the cultural conflicts between family members and the Chineseconflict resolution styles in the Sino-American cross-cultural familiesdepicted in the four films. It is concluded that different cultural values arethe sources and the deep reasons of constant cultural clashes and conflictsbetween family members from the Chinese and American cultures, andsome features of the conflict resolution styles of Chinese people in thefilms can be generalized as indirect communication, avoidance andnon-assertion.