Interpretation of the Mother-Daughter Relationship in the Joy Luck Club from the Perspective of Transitivity System

The Joy Luck Club written by Amy Tan depicts the lifestyle of foreign citizens of Chinese origin. It consists of many stories in which children born in the United States but educated in a Chinese way are destined to have some conflicts with their Chinese born parents due to different environments they were born in. This thesis, based on functional grammar put forward by Halliday, endeavors to focus on the analysis of the mother-daughter interaction in one of the four families—Jing-mei Woo's family from the perspective of transitivity system so as to shed light on the personalities of these characters. After carrying out the corresponding analysis, a conclusion can be made that the daughter is a person with her own mind and she pursues freedom and independence all her life, while her mother is a person attaching great importance to the obedience from her daughter.