Chinese And American Conceptual Cultural Conflicts And Fusions

Edward Burnett Tylor, an English anthropologist, proposes the earliest classicdefinition of culture that is a complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, art,moral, law, custom, and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man as amember of society in his book of Primitive Cultures in1871. Later, more scholarsdefined the culture into three levels: the first layer is the culture of artifact; the secondlayer is the culture of system; the third layer is the culture of concept or conceptualculture. Through the study of culture, there is another term called InterculturalCommunication which is closely associated with culture. Intercultural communicationis a subject that focuses on the communicating conflicts among people of differentcultural backgrounds and the solutions to these conflicts.From the perspective of conceptual culture and combing with some interculturalcommunication theories, the thesis will contrastively analyze the conflicts emergingbetween Chinese mothers and Americanized daughters in The Joy Luck Club. AmyTan, an outstanding Chinese American writer, has become one of the representativesof Chinese American literature. Tan’s debut novel, The Joy Luck Club, is a narrativeabout the conflicts between Chinese mothers and Americanized daughters, whichrepresent the conflicts between Chinese culture and American culture. The focus ofthe thesis lays on the studies of the conflicts between mothers and daughters as wellas analyzes the differences between the Chinese traditional culture and Americanculture. Meanwhile, by analyzing the conflicts and fusions in the novel, this thesisalso reveals that how these two cultures, Chinese culture and American culture, havebeen developing from conflicts to fusions.This thesis is divided into five chapters. The first chapter simply introduces thedefinitions of conceptual culture and intercultural communication. Then, it focuseson the life of Amy Tan and her representative work—The Joy Luck Club. From theperspective of conceptual culture, the second chapter analyzes the differences andconflicts in religious believes, family values, thinking patterns and social customs between Chinese culture and American culture in The Joy Luck Club. The thirdchapter expounds the understanding between mothers and daughters with the aimingof analyzing the cultural fusions between Chinese culture and American culture. Thefourth chapter researches the reasons for conflicts and fusions. The fifth chapter setsforth the strategies of how to avoid the conflicts.The Joy Luck Club is the typical representative work of describing the Chineseand American cultures from conflicts to fusions and harmony. Differences andconflicts of people from different backgrounds are inevitable. Only when people indifferent cultures step over the barriers of the confidence and understanding, they canultimately achieve the communication and understanding. By contrastively analyzingthe conflicts between Chinese and American cultures, on the one hand, we can getaccess to many different cultural aspects of America and also achieve a deeperunderstanding of Chinese culture; on the other hand, as a global village, we maymaintain the unique charm of Chinese culture in cross-cultural communication,absorb the good elements from other countries and make sure of being more qualifiedfor dealing with foreigners in order to promote the development of global culture.