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JUDIT NAGY SELF-CONSTRUALS Min-sun Kims concept of independent and interdependent self-construals (2002) is an attempt at grasping cultural differences between Koreans and North Americans. Ihis approach perceives the self as "a mediating variable between culture and individual behavior." Forming "the most general and overarching self-schemata in an individuals self-system," self-construals pertain to "how people define themselves and their relationships with other people," and they exert a marked influence on cognition, emotion and motivation." According to this theory, the main difference between the independent (Western) and the interdependent (Eastern) types of personality is in how the self is related to others. It is important to point out that independent and interdependent self-construals are not mutually exclusive. In one aspect, a person can be one kind, in another, another kind, the two may also apply together (biculturality), or neither can apply (marginality) along the high and low degree of the two variables, independence and interdependence.® This is exactly why the concept of the two types of self-construal is conducive to the analysis of characters of mixed cultural background. In six points, I will sum up the most important differences between the two construal types, focusing on the features which will be used in my analysis of Ann K. Choi’s novel that will follow. Self-disclosure To start with the features relating to self-disclosure, independent self-construal stresses individual achievement, uniqueness and individuated preferences (i.e. making one’s own choices),’? draws fixed boundaries between the self and the other", regards dependence and unassertiveness as a weakness," and understands Eastern self-criticism as self-deprecation.’* Due to the “higher priority on maintaining independence and asserting individual needs and goals, [...] communicative actions tend to be more self-focused and self-expressive.”!? On the other hand, interdependent self-construal focuses on relationality (i.e. Triandis, H.C., The self and social behavior in differing cultural contexts, Psychological Review, 96 (1989), 507. 5 Kim, Non-Western Perspectives on Human Communication, 16. 6 Ibid., 26. 7 Ibid. 16. 8 Ibid. 170. 9 Ibid., 121-129. This separation is based on Cartesian philosophy: the goal of existence is to objectify the self, to separate the individual from his/her context. Kim, Non-Western Perspectives on Human Communication, 103. 2 Ibid. 129. 13 Tbid., 63. * 160 +
