Abstract
This thesis employs Kenneth Burke’s cluster analysis to examine Ang Lee’s martial arts film Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (USA, 2000). This Mandarin film achieved extraordinary success in the United States, where it was the first foreign-language film to be nominated in ten categories and the first Asian film to be nominated for best picture at the Academy Awards. The goal of this study is to find out how the values can be communicated, through one visual artifact and two different narratives – the Mandarin dialogue and the English subtitles. The analysis finds that the disconnection of Taoism between the Mandarin dialogue and the English subtitles results in the interpretation of the movie from a philosophical to a romantic perspective. The study also uncovers that there are similarities in the idea of moderation in the Mandarin dialogue and the English subtitles, which shows that the persuasiveness of narratives, regardless of the language differences and the structures employed, is subject to values.