Lost In Communication

Amy Tan is part of a movement of Chinese American writers that includes Maxine Hong Kingston. A large part of Tan's contribution to the modern Asian American literary boom is her widespread popularity: aside from winning numerous awards, her first novel, The Joy Luck Club, was a fixture on the best seller list and was made into a feature film. Growing up surrounded by influences from both of the Chinese culture and the American culture, Tan has taken for her theme the lives of Chinese Americans and the generational and cultural differences among them, concentrating on women's experiences. As a group with ethnical and cultural uniqueness in the American society, Chinese Americans always suffer from the uncertainty of identity. They cannot attain a solid sense of belonging from both of the Chinese culture and the American culture. Meanwhile, from the mother-daughter relationship depicted in the novel, it is easy to find out that Chinese Americans are full of controversies within their own group: the Chinese born mothers and the American born daughters often fail to realize mutual understanding with each other.Although some researches have been done on The Joy Luck Club in domestic academia, none of them touch upon the domain of semiology, which, in my opinion, may be a good angle to probe into the mother-daughter relationship in it and thus to perceive the ultimate reason that causes Chinese Americans' confusion and uncertainty of their identity. From a semiological perspective, human communication functions by means of signs, and Chinese Americans can be considered as a group that has access to a distinctive system of signification in communication. Since they are always seeking the sense of belonging between two cultures, there is not a solid center for the system but only the shifts of centers, which result in the absence of the definite meaning in communication. Consequently, Chinese Americans are lost in communication within their own community. In addition, they are also lost in communication with the Americanpeople and culture as well as the Chinese ones.The thesis includes three chapters. Chapter one is in an attempt to identify the special system of signification of Chinese Americans from the perspective of Saussure and Barthes' semiological theories. Chapter two intends to reveal the decentering of the system from Derrida's point of view and analyze the substantial reason that leads to the absence of the center in the Chinese American system of signification which results in the absence of a transcendental signified in communication. Chapter three elaborates on the reality that Chinese Americans are, on one hand, lost in communication with the Chinese and the Americans because of the distinction between the systems of signification; on the other hand, they are also lost in communication within the group due to the absence of the transcendental signified in connotation.Finally, a conclusion is drawn that the system of signification to which Chinese Americans have access is neither a Chinese one nor an American one, but a Chinese American one which is oriented from both of the Chinese culture and the American culture. Therefore, the attempt to understand Chinese Americans from a single Chinese or American perspective is futile as well as ridiculous. Moreover, involved in the system of signification themselves, Chinese Americans can hardly break away from the communication predicament. The solution provided by Amy Tan in The Joy Luck Club is superficial as well as unconvincing.