This study examines the construction of linguistic identities at a time of significant political tension in Hong Kong, with a focus on Hong Kong’s three official languages: Cantonese, the most widely spoken variety of Chinese in Hong Kong; English, the longest serving official language of Hong Kong; and Putonghua, the official language of the People’s Republic of China (PRC), which became an official language in Hong Kong after the 1997 Handover of Hong Kong to PRC rule. Given the current political tensions between Hong Kong and the PRC, particularly in light of grassroots political movements such as the 2014 Umbrella Movement and the ongoing 2019 civil unrest due to the proposed introduction of an extradition treaty between Hong Kong and mainland China, the status of Hong Kong’s three languages is particularly interesting. Past research has primarily focused on the perceived value of these three languages in terms of instrumentality and integrativeness. The current study expands previous research by focusing on how the participants construct a linguistic identity of the self vs. a national language identity for Hong Kong, particularly within or in contrast to a national language identity of the PRC.
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Cited by (4)
Cited by 4 other publications
Leung, Alex Ho-Cheong & Patrick Chi-Wai Lee
2024. Ethnic group affiliation and second/foreign language accentedness in English and Mandarin among Hong Kong speakers. Language, Culture and Curriculum 37:2 ► pp. 171 ff.
Li, Chenyang & Fu Chen
2024. Impacts of ICT-related factors on students’ digital reading literacy: Evidence from high-performing Asian countries and regions. Education and Information Technologies
Siebenhütter, Stefanie
2023. The multilingual profile and its impact on identity: Approaching the difference between multilingualism and multilingual identity or linguistic identity. Ampersand 10 ► pp. 100123 ff.
Theng, Andre Joseph & Tong King Lee
2022. The Semiotics of Multilingual Desire in Hong Kong and Singapore’s Elite Foodscape. Signs and Society 10:2 ► pp. 143 ff.
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