East Asian Languages and Literatures Theses and Dissertations

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Browsing East Asian Languages and Literatures Theses and Dissertations by Subject "Agency"

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    Agency at Play: Impoliteness and Korean Language in Online Interactions
    (University of Oregon, 2019-04-30) Kim, Ariel; Brown, Lucien
    (Im)politeness research has often focused on either the importance of social norms or on the intentions of the speaker, overlooking the active role played by the recipient(s) in assigning social meaning. This limitation pertains particularly to so-called “discernment languages” such as Korean and Japanese. This work addresses this gap by focusing on recipient agency in interpretations/evaluations of impoliteness. Two sets of data are drawn from the naturally occurring computer-mediated communications that appeared in two popular internet portal sites in South Korea. Both sets of data contain metapragmatic discussions of impoliteness that involve recipient evaluation of a speaker’s actions and language use as offensive or not. I focus on how the recipients in the data agentively evaluate the language used by speakers, including inconsistent evaluations of non-honorific language, or panmal. The results show that variability in the interpretation of (im)politeness cannot be explained solely by social norms or intentions, and must also include the socially-mediated agency of the recipient(s).
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    A Comparison of the Representations of Women in Zuozhuan and Shiji
    (University of Oregon, 2012) Zheng, Xiucai; Zheng, Xiucai; Durrant, Stephen
    From Chunqiu and Zuozhuan to Shiji, women have experienced a downgrade of their formal status in historical records. In Shiji, women, the wives of dukes, lost their formal equality with their duke husbands in terms of being written into state history, as we see in Chunqiu. Their activities, including marriage, returning home, visits, and death, disappeared from Sima Qian’s history for the Spring and Autumn period, which focuses on the activities of male members of ruling lineages. A positive representation of women’s wisdom, eloquence, and authority is no longer in the interest of nor taken as a ritual part of history writing in Shiji. In the terms of representation of women, especially those from the Spring and Autumn period, in Zuozhuan and Shiji, Zuozhuan gave fuller representation of women than Shiji and its attitude toward women was more positive in comparison to the latter. First, Zuozhuan in many examples presented women as having authority, agency and initiative; in the Shiji versions of these stories, the roles of women were reduced in order to strengthen the agency of and focalization through the male members of a ruling lineage toward a goal of a linear logic of succession. Second, Shiji stressed the disruptive role of women in state affairs by intensively preserving the stories in Zuozhuan that associated women with political disasters and emergencies. Third, Zuozhuan had a non-gendered approach to the effect of women’s wisdom, knowledge and eloquence; it left space for complexity of characterization for women. In contrast, Shiji and Lienü Zhuan, where these stories in Zuozhuan were transmitted, emphasized a patterned understanding of women and produced gender role types. With the representation of women in Shiji, the effect of the agency of women in history is patterned. In Shiji, women’s agency is more closely connected to political disasters and negative political situations. In the limited representation of positive heroines, their good roles came from their virtue in being self-restrictive and submissive. It implies as a historical teaching in Shiji that the limitation of the political autonomy of women is a way to promise the success of lineage and tradition.
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    Cultural Representations of the One-child Policy in Chinese Literature and Film since 1978
    (University of Oregon, 2016-10-27) Wang, Li; Epstein, Maram
    This dissertation focuses on the cultural representations of the one-child policy ever since 1978. The artistic discourses about the one-child policy provide a fantastic space to explore China’s post-socialist society and contending ideologies. It also sheds light on the intricate relation between aesthetics and politics and these among the state, family and individual. Moreover, as discourses, artistic narratives and images also participate in the redefining of reproduction/one-child policy. Therefore, inquiries into the interaction between aesthetics and politics enrich our understanding of how reproductive ideals are constructed, negotiated and transformed. This dissertation can be divided into five parts. In the introduction part, I introduce issues related to the one-child policy, materials which I use and my main approaches to interpret them. Chapter Two explores how post-1978 family planning films and novel envision the ideal reproductive lives of peasants through the construction of ideal reproductive subjects, especially ideal female models. These artistic works also show changed representations of the ideal role models. Chapter Three looks into the patriarchal reproductive subject in Mo Yan’s Frog which centers on the conflict between state power and traditional male-centric reproductive culture. Although there are ambiguities, the novel demonstrates that the state has failed to transform peasants’ traditional reproductive ideas. Chapter Four deals with women’s exploration of reproduction from the 1980s on. The writings of some female authors demonstrate a consciousness of independent female reproductive desire. In some works, we can even see the emergence of a new kind of female reproductive privacy. In these works, reproduction becomes the female protagonists’ personal, private matter and women’s subjectivity is seen in their ability to make reproductive decisions according to their own interests. In the Coda, I talk about my future research plans. Overall, in this dissertation, I trace the political, economic, cultural, and technical factors that contribute to the gradual emergence of pluralism in reproductive ideas and practices. My dissertation demonstrates the dynamic interaction among different forces affecting reproduction, one of the most strictly controlled realms in Chinese life. Although reproduction is still mainly dictated by the state current two-child policy, a push towards greater individual autonomy is starting to gain momentum.