Tiger Parenting’s Power Dominance in “Two Kinds” Short Story: A Critical Discourse Analysis

This study aims to examine the short story entitled “Two Kinds”. The method used in this study is descriptive qualitative. In gathering the data, the writers applied close reading to determine the sentences which show the social wrong. In analyzing the data, the writers applied transitivity as the tool to analyze the sentences. After analyzing the data, the writers interpreted and related the sentences with social theories, which are tiger parenting and second generation Asian American. The results of this study show that the main character’s mother applied abusive methods as discussed in the tiger parenting explanation. The transitivity is used to prove that the parent, specifically the mother in the story, applies tiger parenting’s abusive system. The abusive system of the mother is realized through physical actions, mental affection, and verbal utterances to her daughter. The short story also contains the second generation of Asian American phenomena. As the second generation of Asian American, the main character rebels against the tiger parenting shown by her utterances towards her mother.


A. INTRODUCTION
In our daily life, people use language to communicate.It is also used to socialize and maintain the relationship between people or groups.Besides its function to sustain conversation among society, language is also used to convey someone's feelings and ideas through literary works.They are the products of social reflection.Harmon and Wilson state that language is an element which has many functions, such as manipulating and controlling the world and those in it (2006, p.1).Thus, we can see that literary works are indeed full of power dominance.By analyzing literary works, we can explore the social problems reflected in society.
In analyzing the social problems in literary works, we can use Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA).The use of CDA is to find the hidden layers of text in the context of social aspects and political aspects.According to Van Dijk (2014) "Critical Discourse Analysis is a type of discourse analysis research that primarily studies the way social power abuse, dominance, and inequality are enacted, reproduced, and resisted by text and talk in social and political contexts".This approach can be used to see how language is formed to show dominance in society.
In analyzing the text, grammar is very important.It deals with the system of wording in a language.To view language as a systemic resource for meaning, the writers used Halliday's systemic functional grammar (SFG).It is believed that grammar is also practical and contextualized according to the speakers and the interlocutor.This paper applies transitivity, which is part of SFG, to analyze the short story.Nurhayati (2018) states that analyzing the transitivity system informs us the way the narrator represents the world and the ideological values which frames the representation.Transitivity gives a way to analyze how the writer of a text represents reality and beliefs.
The data of this paper is taken from a short story entitled Two Kinds by Amy Tan.It is included in Amy Tan's novel entitled The Joyluck Club.Written in 1989, this novel focuses on four Chinese American families who live in San Francisco, along with their four Americanized daughters.They always meet up and tell their own stories.They love playing Mahjong while eating their traditional food, such as dimsum.The story actually focuses on Jing-Mei and through the stories, she can respect the heritage of her tradition.
Two Kinds, is one of the famous short stories in the novel.It tells us about Jing-Mei's childhood life which is full of her mother's high expectations.Her mother believes in the American Dream that everyone can be anything they want to be with hard work and a little luck.She forces Jing-Mei to do many courses in order to find her talents and make her a prodigy.Failing so many times, Jing-Mei decides to refuse all of her mother's orders because she knows that she cannot fulfill her mother's desire.
There are a number of previous studies related to critical discourse analysis and short stories.The studies are written by Rashidi et al (2014) and Frankiw (2017).The first study was written by Rashidi in 2014.The title of the study is "The Critical Discourse Analysis of The Representation of Women And Men in Bozorg Alavi's Short Stories."This study applies critical discourse analysis to investigate the representation of men and women in Bozorg Alavi's short stories.
Particularly, this study focuses on finding the different statuses of men and women reflected in their languages.There are four short stories examined in this paper.Furthermore, the discursive sentences are examined according to Hodge and Kress' syntagmatic models, comprising actionals vs. relations features.The results show that in the short stories, men have higher status than women.
The next previous study is entitled "Representation of Hegemony in the Short Story "The Yellow Wall-paper": A Brief Investigation under Fairclough's Critical Discourse Analysis."It was written by Fankiw in 2017.This study applies the three dimensional approach proposed by Fairclough.The aim of this study is to analyze a short story entitled "The Yellow WallPaper" written by Charlotte Perkins Gilman.The writer concludes that the short story could achieve the main goal of critical discourse analysis, which is to cause some change in society.
There are several studies which are related to short stories and Critical Discourse Analysis.However, there have not been any studies which discuss tiger parenting or the second generation of Asian American.

B. THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK
The first step in analyzing the text is by referring to the theory of threedimensional approach.Fairclough (2010) stated that the three-dimensional approach consists of the text, interpretation, and explanation.Text includes the exploration of linguistic features of a text.Interpretation is concerned with the relationship between texts and other factors such as speech act and intertextuality.Hence, interpretation focuses on the context of the text.Explanation is concerned with the interaction and social context of texts.Systemic Functional Grammar is a wording system to make meanings.In this study, the writers analyze one of the systems of SFG, namely transitivity.Transitivity refers to a grammatical system enabling a language speaker to interpret the world of experience into a process type (Halliday, 2014).Transitivity is realized in a clause.The world of experience of a speaker is understood as an action or event, process, or state.
According to Halliday (2014), there are six types of transitivity.Firstly, the material process involves observable objects as the doers of the actions.Secondly, behavioral process refers to the process of an action which a participant does subconsciously.Thirdly, the mental process is a process which involves perception, emotion, cognition, or desire which a participant undergoes or which comes to the participant's consciousness.After that, the verbal process refers to the process of transferring verbal information or messages of a speaker.Fifth, the relational process expresses the relations of objects.The last one is the existential process which is the process that is marked with the introductory "there" and a verb like be, seem, and appear.
Tiger Parenting is a kind of abusive parenting done by the first Chinese who migrated to the United States.They moved to the United States to look for a brighter future.Thus, the reason why they apply this abusive parenting is because they want their child to be a prodigy who can bring a better future for their family.The way they abuse their child is done in many ways.They can do it physically, verbally, and even mentally.To make it worse, the parents never or rarely praise the child's achievement although it is hard for the child to secure the achievement.In a nutshell, they will harshly force their child to learn and practice to become a prodigy who will bring fame to them.
Second generation Asian Americans are some Asian Americans who have native Asian parents.Meaning to say, they were born in the United States by their parents who are originally from Asia.Although they are biologically Asian, they have different beliefs with their Asian Parents.
Unlike their parents who aim for a better future by becoming a prodigy in a certain thing, these Asian Americans aim for freedom.Meaning to say, they don't want to be restricted and they want to live as free as possible.Therefore, in the end, they would rebel against their native Asian parents due to different beliefs about life and future.

C. THEORY AND METHOD
The object of this study is a short story called Two Kinds.This part is divided into two, namely data gathering technique and data analysis technique.The approach used in this study is qualitative descriptive.According to Creswell (2014), qualitative descriptive is a study which examines and understands the meaning that individuals or groups attach to a social or human issue.Moreover, according to Hancock et al. (2009), qualitative research is defined as "research design concerned with the development and understanding of social phenomena."Thus, it is useful to analyze the social phenomena in individuals or groups.
In gathering the data, the writers determined several sentences which show the social wrong in the text.In gathering the data, the writers applied close reading.Close reading is a particular method to gain explicit information from a certain text by reading the text carefully (Wiggins, 2021).Close reading, in other words, is closely reading a text, examining the details, and analyzing how those elements lead to conclusions about the text.
In data analysis, the writers analyzed the sentences by using SFG, particularly transitivity.It was done by carefully reading the text, selecting the phrases or sentences, and analyzing them with the related theories.After analyzing the sentences, the writers interpreted the sentences and related them with the social theories, tiger parenting and second generation of Asian American.

D. RESULT AND DISCUSSION
The result and discussion section is divided into three parts.The first part focuses on analyzing the clauses which are meaningful to the story by using transitivity.Furthermore, in the first part, the meaningful clauses are categorized into types of transitivity and interpreted.
The text is analyzed by using the theory of transitivity proposed by Halliday (2014).The clauses are chosen based on the consideration of whether they are meaningful to the story.After that, the transitivity of the clauses are analyzed.

Transitivity
The following table consists of the findings of transitivity of the story: No. The first example displays the material process captured on the mother's action.The focus of the power dominance can be spotted on the predicate "slapped".This predicate means to hit someone roughly with an open palm.This belongs to the material process because slapping someone is a visible physical action.This is the text aspect according to Fairclough's theory.As the interpretation, it portrays how the mother physically abuses her daughter by hitting her roughly with her palm.Meaning to say, the mother dominates her daughter with a material process or with a physical action.This is the interpretation aspect of Fairclough's three-dimensional aspect.

Sentences Transitivity
The next example shows the verbal process done by the mother.The highlighted part of the sentence is on the predicate "badmouthed".It means to verbally criticize someone rudely.Therefore, as the text aspect of Fairclough's theory, this predicate indicates the verbal process because the action is done verbally.Furtherly explained, it shows the mother's issue and power dominance.She shows how powerful and dominant she is through her speech.This is the interpretation part of Fairclough's theory.The clause "I was so determined not to try, not to be anybody different" shows a relational process.The relational process indicates that the subject has chosen not to try to be better or different in doing something.In the story, the main character is forced to practice playing piano.This clause shows that the main character disagrees with her mother's treatment.
The clause "But my mother's expression was what devastated me" has a material process.The actor of the clause is "my mother's expressions", the relational process is "devastated", and the goal is "me".This clause indicates that her mother shows her disappointment towards her daughter.Furthermore, the process "devastated" shows that the mother's expression affects the main character's feelings.
The next example is the material process which is shown by the mother's action.In the sentence "She snapped off the TV, yanked me by the arm and pulled me off the floor.",the material processes like "snapped off, yanked, and pulled" are seen as visible physical abuse by the mother towards Jing-Mei.From that example, we can see the power dominance of Jing Mei's mother.She uses physical abuse to make Jing-Mei obey her rules.
Not only used physical abuse, but Jing-Mei's mother also used verbal abuse.It is shown by the verbal process in the example: "Only two kinds of daughters," she shouted in Chinese."Those who are obedient and those who follow their own mind!Only one kind of daughter can live in this house.Obedient daughter!"Here we can see that the verbal process "shouted" shows her mother's anger.She thinks that Jing-Mei is not an obedient daughter because she doesn't want to obey her rules.

How Tiger Parenting's Power Dominance done through Physical, Mental, And Verbal
The story shows various types of power dominance which represents the existence of the Tiger Parenting phenomenon.The power dominance is categorized into physical, mental, and verbal.Meaning to say, the power dominance actions are done physically, mentally, and verbally.Furthermore, this session elaborates the explanation stage of the three dimensional approach.

a. Physical
The example of the action which is done physically, first, is the sentence "My mother slapped me."The sentence above explains the phenomenon of how the Tiger Parent physically abuses their child.As a Chinese parent, when teaching her daughter, she applies the characteristic of Tiger Parenting.Disciplining her daughter by slapping her indeed belongs to the habit of Tiger Parenting.In conclusion, the sentence above shows the phenomenon of Tiger Parenting done by the mother's physical action.

b. Mental
The clause "you could be anything you wanted to be in America" can be addressed as an example as well.This clause shows the very basic background of Tiger Parenting.Meaning to say, this clause indicates the perception and the belief of the mother for coming to the United States.The Tiger Parenting phenomenon happens because the Chinese immigrants aim for a better future in the United States.This also backgrounds the reason why the main character's mother came to the United States.She indeed aims for a brighter future.However, this reason is the main trigger of her abusive actions done to her child.She will force her child to be a prodigy which she believes can lead her to a better future.Later in the story, it can be seen clearly how the mother's Tiger Parenting sides appear in forcing her child.
The example of mental action in the story is "But I was so determined not to try, not to be anybody different".This clause shows the main character's reaction towards her mother's dominance.In tiger parenting, the children always do whatever the parents want.However, this clause shows that the main character does it recklessly.Another example of mental action done in the story is "But my mother 's expression was what devastated me (p.58)."The main character's mind is attacked by her mother's expression.In tiger parents, the parents can attack the children physically and mentally.

c. Verbal
Next example shows the occurrence of Tiger Parent's parenting through their utterance.Tiger Parents rarely praise their kids verbally.Although the kids have struggled and presented their best effort, the parents never look impressed and keep discouraging them verbally.This is shown in the clause "my mother badmouthed the little girl".Although the girl has done her best, the mother still criticizes the performance rudely.We can see another example in the sentence; "You have natural talent.You could be a genius if you want to.You just not trying," my mother said.It can be seen that until Jing-Mei is grown up, her mother still tries to find her talent.Her mother encourages her by saying that Jing-Mei has natural talent, but she doesn't keep trying.From her mother's utterance, we can see the pattern of Tiger Parent.The mother influences Jing-Mei's mindset through her utterance.
The their child with a kind of a verbal test.If the child fails to answer the test, the parent will be disappointed and will even punish their child.The mother of the main character also gives a verbal test every day.If she finds a wrong answer from her child, she will be disappointed and scold her.

How the Second Generation Asian American Sides of The Child Rebels
Against the Tiger Parenting's Dominance According to the theory, the Second-Generation Asian American will eventually rebel against their Tiger Parents.In the story, the main character rebels against the tiger parenting's dominance.The rebels are shown in several clauses: The example of rebellion done by the child is through clause: I had assumed that my talent-show fiasco meant that I would never have to play the piano again.(p.59).This clause shows the beginning of the child's willingness not to play the piano anymore.The word "piano" here symbolizes the parent's power dominance upon the child.
Another pattern that we can see in the second generation of Asian American is Jing-Mei who starts to fight against her mother.It is shown in the sentences: I decided, I didn't have to do what mother said anymore.I wasn't her slave.The sentences show that Jing-Mei already decided her own path, she doesn't want to follow her mother's rules.She was getting tired because of her mother's desires to make her a prodigy that made her like a slave.Jing-Mei's decision is strengthened by her utterance: "You want me to be something that I'm not!"I sobbed." I'll never be the kind of daughter you want me to be!".
The climax of the story is when Jing-Mei said that she hoped she wasn't born and she wished to be dead like her siblings in China.It hurts Jing-Mei's mother and from that moment, her mother stops telling her to find her talent.Starting to feel the freedom, Jing-Mei lives her life like how she wanted to be.It is shown in the sentences: In the years that followed, I failed her many times.I didn't get straight As.I didn't become class president.I didn't get into Stanford.I dropped out of college.The sentences show that Jing-Mei can finally live her life without being burdened by her mother's high expectations.

E. CONCLUSION
There are several conclusions that can be derived from the discussions.Based on the analysis, it can be concluded that the main character's mother applies abusive methods of tiger parenting.According to the transitivity, it shows the tiger parenting's characteristics through the mother's physical action, mental affection, and verbal utterance.Moreover, the story contains the second generation of Asian-American theory.It shows the pattern of Jing-Mei's behavior.At first, she still does her mother's orders, but as time goes by, she starts feeling tired and confused.It is because her mother's desire is not what she wants to do.In the end, she rebels against the tiger parenting expressed through her utterances towards her mother. F.

Cahya Pratama Windiyanto, Maria Dwilla Sekar Putri, David Geba Abi Anandi Tiger
clause "She would present a new test" is also one of the examples of the characteristic of Tiger Parenting shown by the mother.Tiger parents love to test Parenting's Power Dominance in "Two Kinds" Short Story: A Critical Discourse Analysis