The Joy Luck Club is not only the title of an amazing novel and now a movie; it is also the name of the weekly gathering that four Chinese women have participated in for many, many years. The movie The Joy Luck Club opens after the death of Suyuan Woo, the founding member of the Joy Luck Club. Suyuan passed away without fulfilling “an important thing on her mind” (Tan, 1989 p. 38): to be reunited with her twin daughters who she had left while escaping from the war in China. The other three members of the club (An-Mei, Lindo, and Ying-Ying) tell this to Suyuan’s daughter, June, who has been asked to take her place at the Joy Luck Club meeting and play mah-jongg with them. After she learns her mother’s past, the other women reveal that her formally
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Hall’s famed theory of high-context culture gives us insight to better understand the effect culture itself has on communication. Culture influences nearly everything we are, why not our communication patterns? High context communication is described by Edward Hall (1979, p. 91) as using more than words to convey meaning. A larger part of the meaning lies in the physical context (such as eye contact, facial expressions, tone of voice, etc.) than just simply relying on the words by themselves. As a result, the speaker doesn’t just blurt out everything at once and use a million words to say one thing. Instead, they scurry around the main idea and hint at what they’re really trying to get across. This was evident in numerous occasions throughout the entire movie, but one such instance really stuck out to me. The movie flashed back to a memory that June had of her mother at a dinner party. All the Club women and their daughters were over at Suyuan’s house to celebrate. June and An-Mei’s daughter Waverly ended up getting into a heated argument over dinner about an issue that they had with some work that June had provided for Waverly’s company, and Waverly said that her work was amateur and “not-stylish”. Hoping to diffuse the tension and awkward situation, Suyuan says that it’s a shame not everyone is born with Waverly’s style. Mortified at her mother and her friend, June sits in silence for the rest of the dinner. After everyone leaves, she helps her …show more content…
How every conflict was handled and managed though, was a different story. Every woman had a way that they dealt with the conflicts that surfaced in their lives. Conflict management is described as the process of limiting the negative aspects of conflict while increasing the positive aspects of conflict (Alper, 2000). Not the most eloquent definition, but definitely the most straight-forward. Generally, there are five ways that most people deal with conflict. Those five types are avoidance, accommodation, competition, reactivity, and collaboration (McCornack 2013, p.255). I saw all of these conflict management strategies being used at least once throughout the film, but I feel like avoidance was showcased the most throughout the women. One example of avoidance that stood out to me was an issue between Lena and her husband Harold. Lena and her husband had a system that the utilized in their home; they split everything down the middle, payment-wise. They were fair about everything, accounted for every cent being spent, and made lists of everything they paid for or still needed to pay for; even things as mundane as toothpaste. At first Lena enjoyed the system; it was practical, made sense, and seemed to be a perfect solution to money issue problems that other couples sometimes had. As of late though, Lena was growing to resent the system after they got married and moved in
Hall’s famed theory of high-context culture gives us insight to better understand the effect culture itself has on communication. Culture influences nearly everything we are, why not our communication patterns? High context communication is described by Edward Hall (1979, p. 91) as using more than words to convey meaning. A larger part of the meaning lies in the physical context (such as eye contact, facial expressions, tone of voice, etc.) than just simply relying on the words by themselves. As a result, the speaker doesn’t just blurt out everything at once and use a million words to say one thing. Instead, they scurry around the main idea and hint at what they’re really trying to get across. This was evident in numerous occasions throughout the entire movie, but one such instance really stuck out to me. The movie flashed back to a memory that June had of her mother at a dinner party. All the Club women and their daughters were over at Suyuan’s house to celebrate. June and An-Mei’s daughter Waverly ended up getting into a heated argument over dinner about an issue that they had with some work that June had provided for Waverly’s company, and Waverly said that her work was amateur and “not-stylish”. Hoping to diffuse the tension and awkward situation, Suyuan says that it’s a shame not everyone is born with Waverly’s style. Mortified at her mother and her friend, June sits in silence for the rest of the dinner. After everyone leaves, she helps her …show more content…
How every conflict was handled and managed though, was a different story. Every woman had a way that they dealt with the conflicts that surfaced in their lives. Conflict management is described as the process of limiting the negative aspects of conflict while increasing the positive aspects of conflict (Alper, 2000). Not the most eloquent definition, but definitely the most straight-forward. Generally, there are five ways that most people deal with conflict. Those five types are avoidance, accommodation, competition, reactivity, and collaboration (McCornack 2013, p.255). I saw all of these conflict management strategies being used at least once throughout the film, but I feel like avoidance was showcased the most throughout the women. One example of avoidance that stood out to me was an issue between Lena and her husband Harold. Lena and her husband had a system that the utilized in their home; they split everything down the middle, payment-wise. They were fair about everything, accounted for every cent being spent, and made lists of everything they paid for or still needed to pay for; even things as mundane as toothpaste. At first Lena enjoyed the system; it was practical, made sense, and seemed to be a perfect solution to money issue problems that other couples sometimes had. As of late though, Lena was growing to resent the system after they got married and moved in