摘 要

旅美作家李翊云将自身在两国的经历与她的生活经验融于笔下，创造出许多许多鲜活的人物，他们都曾在两个不同的文化环境夹击下挣扎，彷徨，和释放。电影《千年敬祈》取材于李翊云的同名短篇小说，讲述一对父女之间分隔两地多年带来亲情淡漠以及特定时代背景下人与人之间因缺乏沟通所带来的持续多年的误会。本文从社会心理语言学和跨文化理论探讨父女俩产生隔阂的原因和表现，总结二者的基础上，结合小说细节以及电影具体片段着重分析父女俩即使面对文化的断层和语言上的限制也无法抵挡的爱。结合三者，读者们能够更好的理解跨文化语境下后现代人的思想言语行为以及文化冲击中人性情感的挣扎、困惑和解冻。

关键词：爱；语言；跨文化

Abstract

Yiyun Li, a new immigrant writer, living America for years, has combined her actual domestic and foreign experiences and put it into her writing, creating many lively characters in her works. They all have struggled, confused and released in two different countries and cultures. The movie A Thousand Years of Good Prayers adapted from a short story of the same name written by Yiyun Li. It mainly tells about the continuous misconception and indifference between the father and daughter due to lack of communication. The father Mr. Shi and the daughter Yi lan have been separated from each other for years. This paper explores the causes and manifestations of estrangement during this relationship between the father and the daughter. From the perspectives of social psychological linguistics and cross cultural theories, it digs out the inner elements contributing to the fact the movie has depicted. And by summarizing the first two parts, the paper focuses more on the details of the novel and the specific plots in the movie, analyzing love beyond cultural faults and language constraints. Considering the three, readers can better understand the behaviors, words and minds of people in the cross-cultural context in post-modernism.

Key Words: love; language; cross-culture

Contents

1 Introduction 1

2 Love Through Language 3

2.1 Attitude indication and motivation theory 3

2.2 language and identity 4

3 Love crossing borders 6

3.1 Individualism versus collectivism 6

3.2 Acculturation 7

4 Love transcending time and space 9

4.1Age background 9

4.2Cultural ideology 11

5 Conclusion 15

References 16

Acknowledgements 17

A Thousand Years of Good Prayers: Love Beyond Language

1 Introduction

Love, the eternal theme of all human beings, can be defined and felt in varied ways. And language, as the most common way to convey love, is always used to bridge people. When one really love somebody, he would try everything to give his beloved ones the best thing he can afford and seldom expect any equal responses, selfish and great. Therefore, “ I love you.” can be seen as the most beautiful sentence in every kind of language all over the world. Then what if one lose the ability to express his love to the person close. Maybe it is incredible in grand sense. But in fact, it is just the plot in A Thousand Years of Good Prayers--the movie adapted by one of Yiyun Li’s novel shot with the background of multicultural impact centering around the main clue of the father-daughter relationship.

For Yiyun Li, it is proposed that Li’s ability to write about both her native and adoptive countries—her characters including Chinese immigrants in America and emigres on return visits to China—makes her a skillful double agent. (Ahmed,2005) She sticks to using English—her second language rather than her mother language. People tend to believe that a writer’s experience and thoughts can give significance to the writer’s works, which is reflected in the movie obviously. There are also many studies on the writer towards various terms, such as Focusing on the Nonentities and Writing Cultural Differences by Feng Yuanyuan to depict the features of her works, The Analysis of the Identity Construction of the Translator's Behavior for Chinese-American Language writer by Tang Lei to concentrate on the identity construction of the writer herself and The Ones Who Are in Dilemma—the Novel Theory of the Chinese Woman Writer Yiyun Li for Language Acquisition to introduce influence of the cultural identity on her writing by Li Jing.

In this movie, the father and the daughter “Yi Lan” fail to settle down to talk with each other openly and truthfully. For Yi Lan has moved to America and work there for many years, deeply influenced by the western ideological trend, she has already formed a different pattern of thinking. In addition, the misconstruction towards her father which is accumulated over years prevents her from connecting with her father. The movie mainly uses symbolism to illustrate that. The director Wang Ying has used comprehensive objects to indicate the hidden currents of emotion under the peaceful outside between the father and the daughter. He said “People growing up in oriental families usually use other ways to convey their ideas rather than express themselves directly”(Li, 2015). Therefore, many Chinese element props appearing in the scenes of this movie, such as the red scarf to make a mark, wok, and Fu character, by contrast, there also exist many objects symbolizing American culture, which indicates the emotional fluctuation between the daughter and the father (Li , 2015).

At the climax of this movie, the father and daughter have a fierce quarrel. Yi Lan could not handle the frequent monitoring and inquiring from her father, which her father thinks is very imperative and normal. Yi Lan said that she could not express her love in Chinese, and only when speaking in English can she be herself. In her acquired language, she insists, she feels free, just as she is at liberty in virtually every other aspect of her life (MacCarthy, 2007). Another interpretation is, they are the epitome of the two generations of the post-modernity. The times changed and people have changed with it. The young generation tends to break free from the old traditions and beliefs, engulfing contradictions among people. The increasing number of immigrates causes the huge scale of cultural exchange, building high wall of language between the young and the old, blocking the carrier of love.