Siberian Federal University

Issue

Journal of Siberian Federal University. Humanities & Social Sciences. 2025 18 (1)

Authors

Puskás, Andrea

Contact information

Puskás, Andrea: J. Selye University Komárno, Slovak Republic;

Keywords

high-and low-context culture; intercultural communication; communication style; behaviour; intergenerational encounters

Abstract

Amy Tan is one of the most significant representatives of Asian American literature, who openly discusses both the link and the gap between her Chinese American identity and her Asian cultural heritage. By using the theoretical framework of Edward T. Hall (1976) on high- and low-context cultures and the theory of Anna S. Lau et al. (2006) on the link between culture and parent-child relationship, the present study focuses on the differences between intercultural and intergenerational communication in Tan’s novel The Joy Luck Club and their impact on parent and child relationship. The study examines instances of verbal communication and conflicts arousing from the differences of the cultures of the daughters and the cultural background of the mothers and the cultural influence on people’s behaviour and communication styles. The findings of the study confirm that although American culture reflects low-context values and Chinese culture values high-context communication, the communication between the mothers and the daughters changes throughout time, supporting the idea that the categorization of cultures does not involve fixed and stable phenomena and concepts, but is rather at the two ends of a continuum and is open to change due to intercultural and intergenerational encounters

Pages

12–20

EDN

WZTUWY

Paper at repository of SibFU

https://elib.sfu-kras.ru/handle/2311/154372

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC 4.0).