Intercultural discourse: a study of language and culture in Chinese-American narrative writing

Abstract

This thesis examines the relationship between language and culture in narrative writing by focusing on a specific group of texts: published narratives written in English by Chinese American authors. These narratives tend to focus on the minority experience and the use of English to depict the ethnic culture magnifies the intricacies of cultural representation. The intimate relationship between language and culture in these texts is underscored by the fact that language is repeatedly singled out as a primary marker of cultural difference.The concept of intercultural communication provides a useful platform from which to study the interconnections between language and culture in narrative writing. Although the concept is mainly applied to spoken discourse, it highlights a number of important aspects of the narratives in this study. Analysis of the texts reveals that intercultural communication is not only a common feature in the narrative worlds as characters from different cultural groups interact but that the texts also become sites of intercultural discourse by foregrounding those characteristics that make them culturally distinctive.The role of language in these texts is closely related to the way they communicate as intercultural narratives. Thus, this research examines how language is used to establish cultural identity and signify cultural difference. It also describes the various ways in which language is stylistically exploited to express ethnicity. In analyzing the relationship between language and culture in these narratives, an approach combining the resources of both stylistics and sociolinguistics is adopted. The cultural significance of discourse patterns and language representation in the narratives can only be fully appreciated with the aid of sociolinguistic knowledge.