Vulgarity in The Woman Warrior

-----A Stylistic exploration

The Woman Warrior is a book written by the great contemporary Chinese American woman writer Maxine Hong Kingston. It has not only become the milestone in the history of Asian American literature, but also become one indispensable part of American literature. Yet, in sharp contrast to such high acclaim in the circle of expertise, not an insignificant portion of American students do not feel inclined to read it. In this paper, I make a brief analysis on the stylistic feature of this book on the part of ¡°the abuse of vulgarity¡°, so as to find out whether it is so vulgar to offend the readers or it is just because of the postmodern tact that is arranged by the writer engenders the gap between the book and the readers.

Vulgarity postmodern readerly writerly

The Woman Warrior is a book written by the great contemporary Chinese American woman writer Maxine Hong Kingston. It has not only become the milestone in the history of Asian American literature, but also become one indispensable part of American literature. It has won the National Book Critic¡¯s Circle Award for Non-

First, we have to admit that there are really some indecent parts in the text.

Thornborrow J. & S. Wareing, Patters in Language: Stylistics for Students of Language and Literature. London: Routledge, 2000

Back to the book, as what we have found out that in The Woman Warrior, there are not only some vulgar parts of descriptions, but also some refined writings. The sharp contrast between the two different styles of writing compels one to wonder why so elegant style of writing should be positioned side by side with that coarse style of writing. Also as the author is depicting these different parts, she has showed an unaffected and unperturbed manner. She has not showed an elated preference toward the elegant, nor has she showed a strong aversion toward the vulgar. In her description and relation of both the refined and the vulgar parts, she doesn¡¯t emphasize or appreciate the former by means of disapproving the latter. She doesn¡¯t even express a little depreciation to the common and low at all. To her, the two elements are equal, both contain values that could sparkle her writing and both are important to convey the deep meaning under the surface. If we consider a given work¡¯s consistent writing style of a certain author the normal practice in writing, this extraordinarily equable juxtaposition of different writing styles in one text is abnormal. Yet it is just through this deliberate juxtaposition that the author has snubbed the traditional division between the ¡°high¡± and ¡°low¡± culture. By juxtaposing the vulgarity with the elegance in such an equable way the author has in reality filled out the gap between elite and popular culture.

To define ¡°vulgarity¡± is by no means easy. According to an electronic thesaurus,3 derived from the version of Roget's Thesaurus published in 1911, Vulgarity is closest to [Bad Taste] and its synonyms include: barbarism, Vandalism, Gothicism; mauvis gout [Fr], bad taste; gaucherie, awkwardness, want of tact; ill-breeding, discourtesy, and coarseness. Whereas, the closest word to [Good Taste] is Taste and its synonyms include: refined taste, cultivated taste; delicacy, refinement, fine feeling, gust, gusto, tact, finesse; nicety; polish, elegance, grace, virtue; dilettantism; fine art; culture, and cultivation.

Some topics in this essay:
Woman Warrior, Roland Barthes, Woman¡± Kingston, Chinese American, Allen Poe, Asian American, Award Non-fiction, Taste Taste, Vandalism Gothicism, woman warrior, Hong Kingston, ¡°writerly¡± text, american literature, maxine hong, ¡°readerly¡± text, hong kingston, maxine hong kingston, chinese american, sharp contrast, written contemporary chinese, american woman, woman writer, contemporary chinese american, chinese american woman, woman writer maxine,