我要說什麼？我該講什麼？－茱利亞•阿爾巴瑞茲《嘉西亞女兒如何失去她們的口音》中的語言交錯與文化驚恐

What Shall I Say? How Should I Speak?-Crosscutting and Cultural Terror inJulia Alvarez' How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents

謝瑤玲(Yau-Ling Hsieh)

《華梵人文學報》 11期 (2009/01) Pp. 53-75

https://doi.org/10.29930/HJH.200901.0002

摘要

1960年代，嘉西亞四姊妹－卡拉、珊卓拉、尤蘭達、和蘇菲亞－隨著父母親自獨裁政權下的多明尼加共和國逃亡到美國紐約。在美國，四姊妹必須學習融入主流文化，找到新的文化認同。然而，所謂的新認同究竟涵蓋了什麼？一個人要如何「融入」另一個族群？嘉西亞女兒在成長中體認到唯有透過語言的掌控才可能達到某種程度的文化認同。語言是傳播意識型態的工具，也是文化思想的表徵，因此四姊妹勤學英文，但卻在學習過程中面臨種種衝突：與英文不佳的父親、與英文爲母語的美國人、以及新舊文化之間的差異與分歧。
阿爾巴瑞茲的這本代表弱勢族裔論述的小說，由內在經驗探討多元文化並置的可能性，但實際上也指出了族裔與文化、政治、性別、和階級都是不可分割的，而所謂的「融入」並不僅止於建構，更是一種遺忘(forgetting)和記憶的扭曲。四姊妹或許學會了英文，學到英文傳遞的文化，但她們永遠無法脫離介於中間(in-betweenness)的地位，註定在兩個族群之間扮演永遠的異鄉人。然而，也唯有憑藉多種語言和文化的互動和糾纏(entanglement)，她們才有可能完成新的自我界定，達到一種新的認同。
本文以身爲作者替代自我(alter-ego)的三女兒尤蘭達的故事爲主，探索移民女性在發展第二語言的過程中，如何藉文字化解跨越疆界(boundaries)的紛亂與迷惑，在過去的記憶和現實的建構中，跳脫出融入主流文化的迷思，找到自我認同的可能性。

關鍵字

語言交錯 ； 文化驚恐 ； 融入 ； 弱勢族裔論述 ； 認同 ； 糾纏

並列摘要

The Garcia girls-Carla, Sandra, Yolanda, and Sofia-and their parents, Carlos and Laura, are forced to exile from their genteel Dominican life of the 1950s to be plummeted into the turbulent American mainstream of the a1960s and beyond to run away from the persecution of the dictatorship of Trujillo. In America, the girls try to assimilate into the mainstream culture and find a new The Garcia girls-Carla, Sandra, Yolanda, and Sofia-and their parents, cultural identity. However, what does a new identity imply? How can one as an immigrant assimilate into another culture? The Garcia girls, through the process of self-discovery, realize that only by learning to control the new language, can it be possible to reach a certain kind of cultural identity. A language forms ideologies and conveys cultural ideas through discourse. The sisters, especially Yolanda, try hard to grasp English. Yet they are forced to confront with all kinds of conflicts during the learning process: with their heavy-accented father, with the native speakers of English, and with the painful experience of displacement. In this experimental fiction of Latina minority discourse, the author explores the possibility of reconciliation of polarities and the crossing of boundaries and limits in multi-culturalism from intrinsic experience. However, Alvarez's deployment of complex narrative strategies shows that identity is an unstable category undergirded by gender, ethnic, and class trouble. At both the levels of discourse and story, formal and diegetic transgressions mark this novel. Assimilation is more than a complex construction of a new identity; it is involved with forgetting and remembering. The Garcia girls may learn how to communicate in English and elements of the culture structured by English, but they will never rid of the position of in-betweenness. They are destined to be aliens between the two worlds, haunted by the entanglement of multi-languages and multi-cultures.
This article will explore how a subject of immigrant female struggles with language to find the strength and self-assurance to forge an assimilated dual identity on the journey to a self-determined adulthood by focusing on the stories of Yolanda, the third daughter of the Garcias, and the alter-ego of the author, Alvarez.

並列關鍵字

multi-culturalism ； assimilation ； minority discourse ； identity ； entanglement

參考文獻

Alvarez, Julia.(1992).How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents.New York:Plume.

Bakhtin, M. M.(1981).The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays.Austin:U of Texas Press.

Barak, Julie.(1998).'Turning and Turning in the Widening Gyre': A Second Coming into Language in Julia Alvarez's How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accent.MELUS.Spring,158-176.

Bilingual Review

Literary Contexts in Novels: Julia Alvarez's 'How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents