A Discourse-Pragmatic Approach To Cultural Identity In Dreams From My Father

With development of diversified culture under globalization environment, cultural identity catches more and more attention. It involves areas like anthropology, psychology, literature, and linguistics. Many scholars both domestic and abroad have done researches on it. But there is rarely works on cultural identity under multi-cultural context from the perspective of linguisticsCultural identity is the main idea of many literary works, particularly in those works written by Afro-Americans. Dreams from My Father is a book written by Mr. Barack Obama,who is a hybrid brought up by his white grandparents and once lives in Malaysia with his stepfather for several years. The book talks about his childhood, life experiences and his travel to Kenya to find his roots. It involves many characters as well as a variety of discourse with cultural information, thus reflects the speakers'cultural identity within different cultures. Discourse Analysis Theory and Speech Act Theory pay specific attention to language use. Therefore, it would be a very valuable research if the researcher applies Discourse Analysis Theory and Speech Act Theory to analyze the cultural identity among the Kenyans, American whites, and Afro-Americans from the perspectives of pragmatics and social linguistics.Under the framework of Speech Act Theory and Discourse System, this thesis analyzes discourses on cultural identity adopted from the autobiography, so as to demonstrate characters'cultural identity. It analyzes the micro-cultural identity and macro-cultural identity in the discourse. The former refers to people's cultural identity within a country while the latter relates to people's cultural identity under multi-culture context. Besides, this thesis tries to demonstrate the dynamics of cultural identity according to the process of young Obama's pursuing of his own cultural identity. It also touches upon the interaction between different cultural identities. As last, the conclusion is reached:1. Speech Acts Theory and Discourse System can be combined to demonstrate the cultural identity constructed through the employment of words;2. There is interaction among the construction of different cultural identities, which may result in culture integration or culture barrier. But a stable culture identity can be constructed by individual or a nation in the long run;3. Construction of one's cultural identity is a process with dynamics. It develops with innovation in cultural aspects, with cultural diffusion and acculturation. And just because of the dynamics, culture identity promotes culture integration, and further enhances cultural identity of individuals as well as these of nations.There are also shortcomings in this thesis, such as the incompleteness of data, for the book is a little bit leaned to Politics. Therefore, later studies could reduce objects of study and broaden the perspectives, making a research on cultural identity and its dynamics with systematic data under theoretical framework.