The sociolinguistics of Hong Kong and the space for Hong Kong English

The sociolinguistics of Hong Kong and the space for Hong Kong English

 

Group 3: 

 

Course: Sociolinguistics

 

October 18, 2010

 

Introduction: Sociolinguistic reality in Asia

There are four sociolinguistic realities in Asia which we should know before talking about the sociolinguistic of Hong Kong and the space for Hong Kong English.

First sociolinguistic reality is that there is a paradigm shift to the World Englishes. It had been said that English belonged to the U.S. and UK. In these days, however, it is not true. There are many Englishes and English has even the status of a second language in some Asian societies such as India, Malaysia and Singapore as we learned in World Englishes by Braj B. Kachru.

              Second one is that in Asia people who have different mother tongues communicate with each other through English. As a result, English has acculturated in Asian societies where there is no shared Judeo-Christian or European cultural heritage.

             Third one is that English is the most demand for acquisition of bilingualism/multilingualism in Asia. In 1997, there were already 350 million people who used English and India is the third largest English-using nation after U.S. and UK.

Moreover, in some Asian societies, English is assuming the role of first language.

              Fourth one is that English could be a liberating language. According to the article, ‘once a language establishes its autonomy, it is actually liberated, and its “liberated” uses and functions have to be separated from its non-liberated uses.’ So in the case of Hong Kong English, we know that it comes from British English because of the colonization by England. Now it has its autonomy, which means it is free from the British English structure. Also it has its own characteristics which original British English doesn’t have. So we can say that Hong Kong English is the liberated English.

              In the later sections of this paper, we can see how Hong Kong English is liberated from the British English structure in terms of statistics, history, linguistic issues and criteria of World Englishes.

Monolingual Myth

Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, most of the linguists in Hong Kong were quite reluctant to be cognizant of some forms that multilingualism takes in the Hong Kong society. Instead, they focused on researching about the dominance of Cantonese in a variety of domains in Hong Kong. The primary reason why they were insisting on the monolingualism in Hong Kong was that they persistently had stuck to the fact that approximately 98 % of the total population was Cantonese-speaking Chinese. Hence, they considered English was not so much a second language as a foreign language, as the majority of the people there did not need to speak English in their daily communication.

A variety of survey and census conducted during 1980s and 1990s indicate that the total population of the English speakers in Hong Kong expanded drastically in a decade. In 1983, the total number of English speakers in Hong Kong was no more than 6.6%, however after the educational reform at the secondary level of education in 1970s, and the same reform at the university level of education in 1980s and 1990s, the number of the English speakers expanded up to 33.7% in 1993.

The result of the survey conducted by Bacon Shone and Bolton in 1993 indicates that 54% of the people in Hong Kong use English when they do any writing activities at work, and that 59% of the people normally read materials in English at work.

As far as the print media is concerned, the dominance of Chinese language is quite clear. There are 52 news papers published in Hong Kong, and the 50 of them are written in Chinese language, and only 2 are written in English. However, in the private domain of Hong Kong families, English is becoming more and more used in a wide range of varieties. Bacon and Bolton’s survey also show that many of the Hong Kong families have proximity with English language in their everyday lives.

Bacon Shone and Bolton affirm that Hong Kong society is far from monolingual after a series of surveys they had conducted. In Hong Kong, 98% of the people use Cantonese in their daily communication, and 33.7% of the people have a knowledge of English language which is indispensable when people do business, and receive education, and the number of Putonghua speakers is also increasing with the advent of Chinese economic super power. Furthermore, there are also minority languages in Hong Kong such as Malay Tagalog, as many people outside of Hong Kong have immigrated into Hong Kong over years. By far the largest of all groups is Filipinos. They are generally hired as a maid in Hong Kong families. The number of Filipinos has increased from 72,000 in 1991 to 170,000 in 1999. They make a contribution not only to the development of the Hong Kong economy, but also to improving children’s English conversation skills, as they have to speak English when communicating with these Filipino maids.

As we have gone through, there are so many factors that deny the idea of monolingualism in the Hong Kong society. Hong Kong society where various kinds of ethnic groups are in an existence should in no way be called monolingual. It is the society where a variety of languages are general used; multilingual.

History

              The history of Hong Kong was very important to understand how English was introduced to Hong Kong and how the language policies had been developed. From 18^th to 19^th, distinct variety of Chinese pidgin English emerged in Canton and Macau because of the development of the Canton trade. After the First Opium War between Britain and China, Hong Kong was annexed in 1842. The annexation brought many mission schools in Hong Kong, and people received English-medium education. However, Chinese language and literature were also taught in schools. In 1920s and 1930s, there was increasing number of Chinese-medium schools as well. In 1960s, there was the rise in the movement to Chinese language; Chinese-language university institution was established. There was Chinese language campaign in 1970s, and Chinese became a co-official language in 1974. Since then, education reforms were carried out, and compulsory primary and secondary schooling began. Hong Kong itself had been developed in this period: the growth of the city, and the population expansion caused by a lot of refugees.
              In 1980s, amendments to the Official Language Ordinance made the use of spoken Chinese extended into the higher courts. In 1986, the written laws of Hong Kong were translated into Chinese by “Bilingual Laws Project”. Many Hong Kong businessmen moved into China trade and there was the growth of a new middle class in 1980s. In 1992, the basic law of Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, Article 9 said that Chinese language and English are to be used as an official language. In 1995, Hong Kong government announced the new language policy that is “to develop a civil service which is biliterate in English and Chinese and trilingual in English, Cantonese and Putonghua.” Finally Hong Kong was handed over to People’s Republic of China in 1997.
              From 1960s to 1990s was the period of the late British Colonialism, and it created “modern Hong Kong”. After the annexation in 1842, education was conducted first in English, but gradually the use of Chinese language has been extended with the development of education, economy and society.

HK Issue

              As it is now clear that English had been used as an official language and educational medium in Hong Kong because of the British colonial rule which had lasted about one hundred years, “handover” to People’s Republic of China (PRC) greatly changed the situation.  That is, as it is mentioned in history part, PRC announced Article 9, Basic Law of the HKSAR which authorized Putonghua. This law was quite crucial in terms of replacing language position in Hong Kong, thus Putonghua suddenly came to the first place, and English and Cantonese had been placed aside. Such PRC’s position inevitably called confrontation versus Cantonese. As for the side of Hong Kong, they maintained that Cantonese language had a solid position in the Hong Kong society. TV, pop songs, magazine, newspaper and even the government were all using it. Clearly Cantonese was much more than vernacular for people residing in Hong Kong, and they strongly denied the policy. Contrary to such an objection, PRC insisted their language reform policy and Cantonese should be recognized as a regional dialect such as Shanghainese. This claim was based on the fact that Hong Kong was a part of PRC, so official language in Hong Kong naturally should be the same as that of PRC, thus Putonghua, so-called Mandarin Chinese.

              The issue here is not only about the battle between Cantonese and Putonghua, but also the choice, Cantonese or English. Since English has been used in Hong Kong for decades of years, both languages became teaching mediums at schools. Prestigious secondary schools were English-medium, and the door was allowed only for wealthy people. For the lowest rank of schools, on the contrary, Cantonese was used as a teaching medium, and schools in between offered classes in both English and Cantonese. Facing at such an educational disparity, local parents and communities strongly demanded for English-medium schools. This was because Universities in Hong Kong had adopted English as their teaching medium, so it was quite hard for children learning at the lowest rank of schools to pass the entrance exam. Responding to this kind of demands, by 1994, over ninety percent of all secondary schools were English medium. Worried at the risk of linguistic and cultural imperialism, however, Hong Kong government was a little reluctant to spread English-medium education. As the evidence of this hesitance, in 1997, the colonial Hong Kong government which was about to leave the island suddenly announced its encouragement of Cantonese as a teaching medium. Thus, throughout the history of Hong Kong, it was really wavering and undecided about their language policy, and that brought linguistic confusion or more positively, variety over Hong Kong as it can be still observed today.

5 Criteria for World Englishes

              As the group one presented already before, there is a concept: World Englishes in the world. English is not the inner circle countries’ dominant language anymore. In Hong Kong which belongs to the outer circle, people use their own English which is liberated from the structure of the English which is used in countries in the inner circle. There is a linguist whose name is Bulter. He proposed the 5 Criteria for World Englishes: 1). Accent which is “standard and recognizable pattern of pronunciation handed down from one generation to another”, 2). Vocabulary which is “particular words and phrases which spring up usually to express key features of the physical and social environment and which are regarded as peculiar to the variety” 3). A history which is “a sense that this variety of English is the way it is because of the history of the language community.”  4). Literary creativity which is “a literature written without apology in that variety of English.” and 5). Reference works which is “dictionaries and style guides which show that people in that language community look to themselves, not some outside authority, to decide what is right and wrong in terms of how they speak and write in their English”.   In this section, I would like to support the idea of “Hong Kong English” as one of the world Englishes using these 5 criteria.

              First, when I look at the Hong Kong accent, there are a number of localized features in Hong Kong English. According to the research by Bolton and Kwok, local speakers could recognize a Hong Kong accent relatively easily but they had difficulty in labeling other accents of English such as US accent or British accent. A substantial number of people stated a preference for that accent of English associated with “Hong Kong bilinguals”. Hong Kong English has unique accent on its own.

              Second, as for Hong Kong vocabulary, I could see a lot of interesting lexical borrowing from Chinese, in this case mainly from Cantonese, into English. I picked up some examples from the reading material: “ABC” stands for American or Australian Born Chinese, “banana” describes a westernized Chinese, “black society” means a Chinese secret society or triad and “astronaut” is used as a word for a person whose family has emigrated abroad, but who remained working in Hong Kong, and then spends a great deal of time flying between his or her family and Hong Kong. Those are all influenced by Chinese and used in Asian context, therefore different from other Englishes.

              Third, Hong Kong has a long history of linguistic contact with English that dates back to the 17th century. Furthermore, through the history from the late 1960s to the 1990s especially, people in Hong Kong saw the recognition of a distinct “Hong Kong identity” and the transformation of a colonial city to a global city. Thus, English in Hong Kong got its prestige in Hong Kong society. In Hong Kong, if you could speak English, you would be regarded as a “Hong Kong Man” who is “go-getting and highly competitive, tough for survival, quick-thinking and flexible”.  Throughout the history, Hong Kong English is one of the keys of new identifications of the “cosmopolitan” Hong Kong.

              Fourth, Even though a linguist Chan’s pessimistic idea against the literary creativity in English in Hong Kong, there are actually a significant number of creative works published by local writers in recent years.

              Last one is reference works. When I look at other countries in the outer circle such as Singapore, India, and Philippines, there are some dictionaries or style guides of their local variety of English. In Hong Kong actually also there are some companies or linguists who are working on making a dictionary of variety of  English in Hong Kong, or compiling a database of around one million words of English there as a part of the worldwide ICE project.

              Varieties of English are not only created from above, but also bubble up from below too. For example, the language of ICQ which is one of the computer communication tools as well as MSN messenger or Skype chatting, is English, sometimes it is possible to see a distinct code-mixing and hybrid variety. Please refer to the attached material as an example. Hence, these 5 criteria are sufficiently persuasive or powerful concept to support the idea of “Hong Kong English”.

Conclusion

              Through this paper, we understand 3 points. One is that Hong Kong is not a monolingual but a multilingual country.  They speak English, Cantonese, and Chinese. And their English, which is Hong Kong English, is one of the World Englishes as we examined in 5 criteria of World Englishes. Second point is that Hong Kong’s policies were changed along the history. People in Hong Kong used to speak Cantonese. However, after the annexation, they started to use English especially in education field. Then, since 1960’s some governmental policies and movements made people use Chinese as well. So, the current linguistic situation in Hong Kong is complicated. Third point is 2 linguistic battles in Hong Kong. In our paper, we paid attention to the battle between English and Cantonese. However, English has the higher status than Cantonese and Chinese now, because English used to be the only one official language from the annexation to 1974. So rather than the battle between English and Cantonese, the linguistic battle between Cantonese and Chinese is more heated in Hong Kong now. This is because of the different opinions about Cantonese and different opinions about writing system between Hong Kong and People’s Republic of China. Throughout this research, we think that Hong Kong might be a good model when we think about Japan as a cosmopolitan from the sociolinguistic point of view in the future.