Expressive Depths: Dialogic Performance of Bridal Lamentation in Rural South China

Through the lens of dialogism, a performance-sensitive perspective, and the conception of emotion as evocative and transformative, this research explores the “expressive depths” of bridal lamentation that was practiced in rural south China. Carrying multiple layers of meaning, bridal lamentation provides all its participants—not only the bride but also her interlocutor and audience—diverse expressive niches from which they intertextually formulate the social wisdom that facilitates identity reconfiguration, emotional transformation, and humanistic cultivation of empathetic listening and the moral spirit of fortitude that would equip the bride for her lifetime.