Double Marginalized Discourse In The Kitchen God's Wife

In accompany with the development of the minority American literature, such as Feminism and Postcolonialism, the Chinese American woman writers who were in the double marginalized position have been attached great importance. Amy Tan is one of the most outstanding writers, whose identity is also a Chinese American woman. After the publication of her second novel The Kitchen God's Wife, which was published in 1991 was a great triumph and attracted a great deal of positive popularity and critical attention. There have been many critiques on The Kitchen God's Wife, concerning Amy Tan's outstanding writing techniques and creating style, or from the perspectives of feminism literary criticism and the phenomenon of cultural conflict. These studies are mainly from the perspective of literary criticism. Different from the above research about the novel, this thesis is trying to study the twin themes of sexism and racism in The Kitchen God's Wife with Functional Stylistics as the main analytical tool as well as the relevant conception in Narratology which is complementary to illustrate the social meaning which is concealed under the choice of linguistic modes. This thesis consists of 6 chapters:Chapter one gives an introduction, outlining the plan of this thesis and serving as the basis for the discussion in the following chapters. This chapter presents the theoretical background, objective, method of the survey as well as the valuable data selectionChapter two explores the theoretical foundation from the literary field. It first makes a clear definition for the "double marginalized discourse". In terms of a comparative approach, it introduces the two theories—Feminism and Postcolonialism, which have been adopted frequently in the literary criticism as well as their significance for revealing the twin themes in The Kitchen God's Wife. Furthermore, the limitations of the belletristic criticism for the discourse analysis have also been highlighted—that is the arbitrariness and subjectivity.Chapter three constructs the theoretical frameworks in Systemic Functional Stylistics, which is serving for the discourse analysis of this thesis. And then stresses the relevant concepts in Narratology as well as the function of Functional Stylistics to the study of speech and thought pattern.Chapter four and Chapter five are the analyzing parts. Chapter four is in accordance with the complementary feature of Narratology and Functional Stylistics, combines the first-person narrator's point of view, makes a stylistic analysis about the female characters' discourse, and then discusses how Amy Tan take advantage of the multiple female point of view to strive for the authoritative narrative voice for the females, helps the readers to recognize the misery source of the females in the old society as well. Chapter five employs the Transitivity System, Thematic structure, Appraisal Theory, etc. to analyze the explicit and implicit racism discourse, leading to the fact that this kind of discourse is both dominant and covert to the readers' thought pattern. The analysis based on the theory of Functional Stylistics reveals a fact more objectively, rationally and realistically that readers can get acquainted with the author's intention easily: In the binary opposition of the two different value system, Amy Tan finally makes Winnie to choose the western value system. Therefore, it can be concludes to the fact that the author is trying to cater for the westerners' thought pattern of Orientalism.Chapter 6 concludes with the summary of this thesis and the significance of this study.According to the multidimensional decoding of the twin themes, multiple voices, and the linguistic feature in the novel, conclusion and significance of this study are achieved: The narratological-stylistic approach supplements each other, and contributes to both of the macro and micro analysis on the double marginalized discourse in The Kitchen God's Wife. Therefore, Systemic Functional Linguistics contributes greatly to the study of the literary text.This study is significant in two aspects. Firstly, its significance consists in enhance the readers' appreciative awareness, especially students' critical learning of English. Secondly, this study is significant because it provides readers, particularly feminists and anticolonialists, with a set of effective and objective analytic tools for the analysis of the literary texts.