CC BY
7ФИЛОЛОГИЧЕСКИЕ НАУКИ
Taisiya Belyanina
Senior lecturer of Comparative Linguistics Dept.
Oles Honchar Dnipro National University
WRITING BEYOND LINGUA MATERNA: KYOKO MORI'S CHOICE OF BELONGING
Summary: This article brings into focus specificity and complexity of the linguistic and cultural agenda of the literary works of Kyoko Mori, a Japanese American author and a bilingual person, who emigrated from Japan to the USA in her adulthood. During her transition between cultures, K Mori has chosen assimilation and English language acquisition as new means for self-expression, but abandoned Japanese verbalization, which seemed oppressive to her creative work.
Due consideration has been given to Kyoko Mori's creative approach towards her biographical writing, in particular, her autobiographical novel "Polite Lies: On Being a Woman Caught Between Cultures." Mori's perception of politeness, as the power that impedes expression of one's self, is a basis for "polite lies," a central image for her emotion of non-belonging.
In her novel, she points out gender difference in the Japanese language, arguing that in her mother tongue she cannot express herself unreservedly.
Therefore, Kyoko Mori has adopted English as a language of her "voice," thus problematizes the fact of her belonging. She has never claimed directly her belonging and used English as a strategy of detachment from any claims. Kyoko Mori has explicitly opened a new terrain in the transcultural lingua-scape of the globalized world.
Key words: Japanese American literature, multiculturalism, transnational identity, bilingualism, women writing.
Introduction
Literary and cultural scholars in their studies observed some changes in today's monolingual framework and point out the ever-growing diversity in linguistic and literary scape. The new term 'post-monolin-guality' could be applied not only to bilingual writings, but also to the works of authors (e. g., Joseph Conrad), who write in other languages than their mother tongues, thus, they do not actually define their belonging as such.
The key aspect of this article is the specificity and complexity of the linguistic and cultural agenda of the works of Japanese American writer Kyoko Mori, who was born in Kobe, Japan, in 1957, and moved to the USA when she was 20. Kyoko Mori's works, written exclusively in English, include novels, fictional autobiography ("Shizuko's Daughter", "One Bird"), and non-fiction works, which also bear autobiographical motifs ("Dream of Water", "Polite Lies"). In this paper, the discussion centers around Kyoko Mori as a bilingual writer, who emigrated from Japan to the USA and learned English when she was already an adult, but not in early age like, for instance, Kazuo Ishiguro or V. Nabokov.
We can name but few authors - Watanabe Kayoko, Masami Usui, Leilani Linda Nishime, Kyoko Norma Nozaki, Yulia Rumak among them - who studied K. Mori's writings and presented their views in the monographs and papers.
Phenomenon of bilingualism of immigrant writers
In "New Immigrant Literatures in the United States: A Sourcebook to Our Multicultural Literary Heritage" (ed. by Alpana Sharma Knippling, 1996), Benzi Zhang, an expert in the comparative literature
analysis and the author of the chapter on the Japanese-American Literature, states that nowadays the term "immigrant literature" refers not only to the writing of immigrants, but also to the texts of their descendants. In addition, this term refers to a wide body of problems that deal with the phenomenon of transnational identity. Benzi Zhang argues that immigrant literature that is the literature written both by and about immigrants "concerns not only the movement across the borders of a country but also the experience of traversing the boundaries and barriers of space, time, race, culture, language, history, and politics and the complexities and ambivalences associated with defining an (im)migrant identity between and beyond boundaries" [10, p. 125].
A common feature in all the characters in Japanese American literature works through several generations, beginning with issei (the first generation of immigrants), has been continuous inner struggle of individuals to solve the dilemma: either to assimilate in the new society, or remain culturally different. Benzi Zhang puts forward the idea that contemporary Japanese-American writers, being caught between cultures, try to represent the survival and growth of individuals gaining "strength from their (im)migrant experience" [10, p. 125-126].
The same problem of choice is outlined by Aneta Pavlenko in her book "Multilingualism, Second Language Learning, and Gender" (2001), based on in-depth investigations of the phenomenon of bilingualism of immigrant writers. A. Pavlenko suggests that in a process of learning a second language, particularly during a transition between cultures, a person may find out alternative ways for feminity or masculinity performance and, therefore, new means for self-expression.
Under such circumstances, everybody has to make his/her choice - either to assimilate and to adopt the
new means of self-expression, or resist both these options [7, p. 145].
Japanese American writer Kyoko Mori has chosen the first option and abandoned the Japanese language for self-expression, putting her mother tongue down as oppressive for her writings. In her autobiographic novel "Polite Lies: On Being a Woman Caught Between Cultures" (2011), Mori shares her impressions about her visiting Japan after several years of living in the USA. The Japanese language seemed "a steel net" for her, the language of extreme politeness, which bars individuals from expressing themselves freely, and that is especially true with women's self-expression. "[...] This politeness is a steel net hauling us into the country where nothing means what it says" [7, p. 5]. Mori's perception of politeness, as the power that impedes expression of self, is a basis of "polite lies", and this image becomes central for her emotion of non-belonging in her novel of the same title.
To the best of her competencies as a linguist with Ph.D. in English/Creative Writing and a skillful writer, Kyoko Mori explores the linguo-mental aspects in Japanese and American cultures and correlates the singularities of both cultures to her own linguistic observations and her philosophy as a writer.
It could be argued that such comparative analysis of two cultures, which is grounded on collation of soci-olinguistic and gender differences, is the quintessential principle of Kyoko Mori's creative writing. Due to the fact that K. Mori immigrated to the USA being already an adult, she had a chance to gain first-hand experience as a stranger who struggled through all the stages of adaptation to another language and the new society. The author stresses that, while speaking Japanese, each partner in conversation is supposed to stick to a certain level of politeness appropriate to the other person's age and rank. For Mori these rules are unacceptable and utterly embarrassing.
Moreover, gender differences in the Japanese language are as important as ranks: "Men and women speak different languages: women's language is much more indirect and formal than men's. There are words and phrases that women are never supposed to say, even though they are not crude or obscene" [5, p. 11].
K. Mori is convinced that her mother tongue is incoherent for expressing herself unconditionally: "In Japanese I don't have a voice for speaking my mind" [5, p. 16], and therefore she adopts English as the language of her "voice," thus she problematizes the fact of her belonging. Remembering her studying in the USA, she describes it as a "process of acquiring a voice" [5, p. 18], when she learned not only how to speak or write the foreign language, but also got used to thinking in English just like her favorite writers do - Maxin Kumin, Anne Sexton, Sylvia Plath.
It is a generally known fact that when Kyoko Mori's first novels in English had been published, she refused to translate them into Japanese for publishing in Japan. In "Polite Lies," she explains the reason in a rather evasive manner: "No one can write novels in a language she has not spoken every day for more than a decade. But there is another reason I could not possibly have written my novels or poems in Japanese: I was
never taught to write in what was my native language" [5, p. 164]. However, we can assume that before she became a writer she had already managed to develop an exclusive second language allegiance.
Analyzing the assimilation of an immigrant in other language environment, A. Pavlenko argues that the intention to avoid certain ways of performing feminity in one's mother tongue may be determined by "negative attitudes to gender ideologies and discursive practices of one's native speech community, where the language "doesn't name" the individual or labels her wrongly, while the culture devalues her and limits her options of self-expression" [7, p. 145].
Nevertheless, other critics do not share these views. Kayoko Watanabe, for instance, suggests that Mori has not been able to respond to sorrows with forgiveness and leave them in the past; while some of Mori's judgments K. Watanabe considers to be nothing else than generally held prejudice about Japanese men [11, p. 47-55]. However, the text analysis of Mori's works does not give any grounds for this sophisticated argumentation.
In "Polite Lies," K. Mori explores the problem of self-expression in the language of her personal choice. This new perspective not only fixes language's specificity, but also marks individual attitude to the problem of writer's freedom, thus she disavowals the possibility of writing exclusively in the mother tongue.
Transition from one language to another is treated by K. Mori as an action similar to switching over to another wavelength. "People often tell me that I am lucky to be bilingual, but I am not so sure. Language is like a radio. I have to choose a specific station, English or Japanese, and tune in. I can't listen to both at the same time. In between, there is nothing but static" [5, p. 17].
Commenting on this process of transition, A. Pavlenko terms it as "self-translation" and states that it is conditional on reinterpretation of person's subjectivities rather than on a personal choice of the language for communication and self-expression, because the primary objective of an immigrant is to find his/her place in another community and to realize his/her full potential. She argues that transition to a different culture may demand from an individual to change "how one views and performs gender" [7, p. 133-135], though problematics of books by K. Mori, who has passed all the way to the new community herself, cannot be reduced to this aspect.
In her autobiography, K. Mori mentions that even in conversation with her colleagues from Japan, she is embarrassed to use Japanese addressing a man, because her mother tongue dictates her to use the "feminine" language that sounds "indirect, submissive and unassertive" [5, p. 12]. Resisting this kind of language pressure, she chooses English to keep the conversation "on an equal footing": "We are colleagues, meant to be equals. The language I use should not automatically define me as second best" [5, p. 11-12]. The combination of words "second best" might be "an aftershock" of feminist discourse of the mid-to-late 20th century ("The Second Sex" by Simone de Beauvoir, 1949).
However, thoroughly comparing her mother tongue, Japanese, and her second language, English,
Kyoko Mori discovers similarities in the usage of polite expressions that may serve as a tool to avoid direct formulations, particularly, when expressing disagreement or refusal.
So, Mori performs extensive investigations into peculiarities of both languages by comparing Japanese-English equivalents, specifically, indirect polite expressions commonly used in Japan and the Midwest. Accordingly, Mori formulates two principles of being indirect: never say no and always use a disclaimer as a downtoner.
Likewise, Suwako Watanabe, investigating verbal behavior of Japanese and American students who took part in group discussions in Japanese ("Cultural Differences in Framing: American and Japanese Group Discussion", 2004), has also found similar patterns of participants' interactions.
According to S. Watanabe, a distinctive feature of the Japanese communication is the tendency toward non-confrontational communication, which is reflected in the extensive use of indirect and ambiguous expressions. Social motivation in Japanese communication style is based on seeking harmony within a group and sensitivity to the concept of "face." The researcher presents the results of frequency analysis of framing usage by the American and Japanese actors and emphasizes that the Japanese participants tend to use framing as indirect and polite utterings more often than the American students do. On the other hand, the American participants prefer straightforward, direct phrasing even when conversing in Japanese [9, p. 176-180].
K. Mori is fully aware that the established identity of polite expressions in different languages may be delusive. Thus, sometimes it is rather difficult to define whether an invitation in Japanese is "real" or it is only a gesture of politeness. Such situations make K. Mori feel perplexed and awkward in communication for her fear of misinterpreting partner's words and offending him. However, similar "polite-but-not-really-meant invitations" in the Midwest do not confuse her and she can easily elicit their real meaning [5, p. 8-10]. In the same manner, bilingual writer Kyoko Mori, using her linguistic intuition, compares Japanese and American cultures from the perspective of her life and creative experience and devises her perception of the two cultures through her own language apprehension.
This process has been vividly illustrated in Chapter 9 "Tears," where K. Mori describes the phenomenon named by her as "to receive crying" (Jp. morai-naki), i.e., a situation when crying is not the result of personal rueful feelings, but just an emotional response to other people's tears. The author states that morai-naki is a group act, and, therefore, such behaviour is treated as appropriate in the Japanese community, while displaying personal emotions in public is considered embarrassing [5, p. 181-183].
Kyoko Mori's creative approach towards her biographical writing
Yet, the influence of K. Mori's mother tongue on poetics and stylistics of her writing should not be underestimated. For instance, Kayoko Watanabe is con-
vinced that K. Mori's autobiographical novels are inextricably connected with Japanese centuries-old literary tradition and the autobiographical structure and stylis-tics of Mori's novels ("The Dream of Water" as one of spectacular examples) allow for referring them to the Japanese genre known as "watakushi-shousetsu" ("I-novel") [11, p. 49].
Many critics agree that Kyoko Mori's writings have a flavor of lyrism and poetic sentimentality - the traits that have been inherited from the Japanese poetical tradition. One of the scholars, Kyoko Norma Nozaki, takes special notice of details in Kyoko Mori's novels, such as description of seasonal flowers in "Shi-zuko's Daughter". In K. Nozaki's opinion, K. Mori creates the vivid scenery of four seasons in Japan, "choosing words thoroughly, like a painter chooses colours" [12, p. 186]. This poetic device is in perfect correlation with the device generally known as kigo, the use of "season words" (^Ho), which is peculiar to classical Japanese poetry.
Kyoko Mori's "Japaneseness" is revealed in description of Japanese traditions and day-to-day life. Explaining her creative approach in one of the interviews, K. Mori compares journalism and creative writing as two extremes: one is to write about "someone other than yourself, something that you don't know", and the other one is writing about the self and something familiar. K. Mori believes that most of writing "happens in the middle," while her own writing philosophy is that an author "can't write enough fiction on something that didn't happen." Following this philosophy, Kyoko Mori grounds her autobiographical novels ("Dream of Water", "Polite Lies: On Being a Woman Caught Between Cultures", "Yarn: Remembering the Way Home"), as well as fictional writings ("Shizuko's Daughter", "One Bird") on biographical material. She claims that she always relies on her memory for writing fiction, and changing only some details "opens doors for other inventions" [1].
Benzi Zhang, Aneta Pavlenko and other scholars advocate the view that autobiographical writing is representative of writers of transnational identity. Benzi Zhang ranks autobiography together with the mainstream genres of the Japanese American literature [10]. American critic Sidonie Smith in her work "A poetics of women's autobiography: marginality and the fictions of self-representation" [8] claims that every woman author who writes autobiography touches upon the issues of gender and race, even if only implicitly. Transnational women writers more often than not deal with such issues as gender and race, gender and ethnicity, class, culture, and gender and language as well. Due to their bilingualism, these authors are apt to scrutinize these problems thoroughly and "through multiple lenses" [7, p. 141].
Conclusion
Kyoko Mori, a native to Japan, the country "where nobody was supposed to talk about personal feelings" [5, p. 193], turns to autobiographical writing that presents vibrant revelation of her personal circumstances. She has never been writing in her mother tongue,
though she always inscribes the mother tongue perspective in her oeuvres in the most subtle way. She never claims directly her belonging and uses English as a strategy of detachment from any claims. She has certainly discovered an untravelled terrain in transcultural lingua-scape in the globalized world and, as a linguistically gifted writer, she does not spare her effort to explore it.
References
1. GMU-TV, 2012. At Mason: Conversation with Kyoko Mori [online] Available at: https://vimeo.com/46232933 [Accessed 20 November 2017].
2. Knippling A. S., ed., 1996. New Immigrant Literatures in the United States: A Sourcebook to Our Multicultural Literary Heritage. Westport CT and London: Greenwood Publishing Group.
3. Mori K., 1996. Dream of Water. New York: One World/Fawcett Columbine.
4. Mori K., 1996. One Bird. New York: Fawcett Juniper.
5. Mori K., 1999. Polite Lies: On Being a Woman Caught Between Cultures. New York: Fawcett Books. The Random House Publishing Group.
6. Mori K., 1994. Shizuko's Daughter. New York: Fawcett Juniper.
7. Pavlenko A., ed., 2001. Multilingualism, Second Language Learning, and Gender. New York: Mouton de Gruyter.
8. Smith, Sidonie, 1987. A poetics of women's Autobiography. Marginality and the fictions of Self Representation. Indiana University Press.
9. Watanabe, S., 2004. Cultural Differences in Framing: American and Japanese Group Discussions. In: Eds. S. F. Kiesling, C. B. Paulston. Intercultural Discourse and Communication: The Essential Readings, 226-247.
10. Zhang, B., 1996. Japanese American Literature. In: New Immigrant Literatures in the United States: A Sourcebook to Our Multicultural Literary Heritage. Ed. A. S. Knippling. Westport CT and London: Greenwood Publishing Group, 125-141.
11. ^Hfêâ^, 2006. -^V
^39^. pp.47-55.
12. SÍJRÍ, 1997. iHt^^ot : Acta humanistica et scientifica Universitatis Sangio Kyo-tiensis. Foreign languages and literature. Series 24. 1997-03. pp. 172-192.
Pshenychnaya M. S.
Postgraduate student Department of history of literature and classical philology
School of philology V. N. Karazin Kharkiv National University Пшеничная М. С.
Аспирантка
Кафедры истории зарубежной литературы и классической филологии Филологического факультета Харьковского национального университета имени В. Н. Каразина
TRANS TEXTUALITY AND INTERTEXTUAL REFERENCES IN THE NOVEL ELIZABETH
COSTELLO BY J. M. COETZEE ТРАНСТЕКСТУАЛЬНОСТЬ И ИНТЕРТЕКСТУАЛЬНЫЕ РЕФЕРЕНЦИИ В РОМАНЕ ДЖ. М. КУТЗЕЕ «ЭЛИЗАБЕТ КОСТЕЛЛО»
Summery: The article deals with the research of transtextuality in the novel by South African writer J. M. Coetzee "Elizabeth Costeño". This novel is a hypertext and is based on relations of derivatives. Due to this relationship text by J. M. Coetzee can be examined in several types of transtextual relation: paratextuality, hyper-textuality, architextuality, metatextuality and intertextuality. Special emphasis is put on the analysis of intertextual forms (citations, allusions and reminiscences) and their function in the text. Key words: J. M. Coetzee, transtextu-lity, paratextuality, hypertextuality, architextuality, metatextuality, intertextuality, allusion, reminiscence, citation.
Аннотация: статья посвящена изучению транстекстуальности в романе южноафриканского писателя Дж. М. Кутзее «Элизабет Костелло». Данный роман является гипертекстом и основывается на отношениях производности, благодаря чему текст Дж. М. Кутзее можно рассматривать в соответствии с различными типами взаимодействия текстов: паратекстуальность, гипертекстуальность, архитекстуальность, метатек-стуальность и интертекстуальность. Отдельно внимание уделяется анализу форм интертекстуальности (цитированию, аллюзиям и реминисценциям) и их функции в тексте. Ключевые слова: Дж. М. Кутзее, транстекстуальность, паратекстуальность, гипертекстуальность, архитекстуальность, метатекстуальность, интертекстуальность, аллюзия, реминисценция, цитация.
Первый роман периода эмиграции южноафриканского писателя Дж. М. Кутзее «Элизабет Ко-
стелло» (2003) неоднократно становился предметом литературоведческой рефлексии. Однако большинство исследователей изучали роман, как и все
