Cover not available
Article published In:
Language, Politics and Media: The Hong Kong Protests
Edited by Guofeng Wang and Ming Liu
[Journal of Language and Politics 21:1] 2022
► pp. 143–172

Metalinguistic tactics in the Hong Kong protest movement

ORCID logo | University of Reading
| The Open University of Hong Kong
This paper explores the metalinguistic tactics used by Hong Kong protesters in 2014 and 2019 and how they reflected and exploited a range of dominant ideologies about language in the city. These tactics are considered both in terms of their rhetorical utility in the “message war” between protesters and authorities, and their significance in the broader sociolinguistic context of Hong Kong. The analysis reveals how such tactics entailed both opportunities and risks, allowing protesters to create shareable discursive artifacts that spread quickly over social media and to promote in-group solidarity and distrust of their political opponents, but also limiting their ability to broaden the appeal of their messages to certain segments of the population and implicating them in upholding language ideologies that promote exclusion and marginalization.
Keywords: anti-languages, folk-linguistics, language ideologies, language mocking, metalanguage
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Metalinguistic tactics and political resistance
  • 3.Language mocking
  • 4.Linguistic obfuscation
  • 5.Folk forensics
  • 6.Conclusion
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 22 September 2021
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/jlp.21017.jon
References (78)
References
Aboelezz, Mariam. 2014. “The Geosemiotics of Tahrir Square: A Study of the Relationship between Discourse and Space.” Journal of Language and Politics 13 (4): 599–622. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Agha, Asif. 2003. “The Social Life of Cultural Value.” Language and Communication 231: 231–273. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Anthonissen, Christine. 2003. “Challenging Media Censoring: Writing Between the Lines in the Face of Stringent Restrictions.” In Discourse Approaches to Politics, Society and Culture (Vol. 81), ed. by James R. Martin, and Ruth Wodak, 91–112. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.Google Scholar
Aslan, Erhan, and Camilla Vásquez. 2018. “‘Cash Me Ousside’: A Citizen Sociolinguistic Analysis of Online Metalinguistic Commentary.” Journal of Sociolinguistics 22 (4): 406–431. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Blackledge, Adrian. 2012. “Multilingualism and Ideology.” In The Encyclopedia of Applied Linguistics, ed. by Carol Chapelle. Hoboken, New Jersey: Wiley-Blackwell. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Blommaert, Jan. 2015. “Meaning as a Nonlinear Effect: The Birth of Cool.” AILA Review 281: 7–27. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Bolton, Kingsley, and Helen Kwok. 1990. “The Dynamics of the Hong Kong Accent: Social Identity and Sociolinguistic Description.” Journal of Asian Pacific Communication 1 (1): 147–172.Google Scholar
Chen, Yun-Chung, and Mirana M. Szeto. 2017. “Reclaiming Public Space Movement in Hong Kong: From Occupy Queen’s Pier to the Umbrella Movement.” In City Unsilenced: Urban Resistance and Public Space in the Age of Shrinking Democracy, ed. by Jeffrey Hou, and Sabine Knierbein, 69–82. New York, NY: Routledge. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Cheng, Edmund W., and Wai-Yin Chan. 2017. “Explaining Spontaneous Occupation: Antecedents, Contingencies and Spaces in the Umbrella Movement.” Social Movement Studies 16 (2): 222–239. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Choy, Howard Y. F. 2018. “Laughable Leaders: A Study of Political Jokes in Mainland China.” In Not Just a Laughing Matter: Interdisciplinary Approaches to Political Humor in China. ed. by King-fai Tam, and Sharon R. Wesoky, 97–115. Singapore: Springer. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
de Certeau, Michel. 1984. The Practice of Everyday Life. Translated by Steven Rendall. Berkeley and Los Angeles: The University of California Press.Google Scholar
Culpeper, Jonathan. 1996. “Towards an Anatomy of Impoliteness”. Journal of Pragmatics 25(3): 349–367. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Dementyev, Vadim V. 2009. “Russian Anekdots of the 1970s: On the Material of the Soviet Humorous Journal ‘Krokodil’.” Russian Journal of Communication 2 (3–4): 185–198. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Dentith, M. R. X. 2018. “Expertise and Conspiracy Theories.” Social Epistemology 32 (3):196–208. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Dorleijn, Margreet, and Jacomine Nortier. 2019. “Introduction.” Applied Linguistics Review 10 (3): 281–291. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Evans, Stephen, and Christopher Green. 2007. “Why EAP Is Necessary: A Survey of Hong Kong Tertiary Students.” Journal of English for Academic Purposes 61: 3–17. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Flores, Nelson. 2014. ‘Let’s Not Forget That Translanguaging Is a Political Act’. The Educational Linguist. [URL] (April 8, 2021).
Gal, Susan, and Kathryn A. Woolard. 1995. “Constructing Languages and Publics: Authority and Representation.” Pragmatics 5 (2): 129–38. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Gao, Xuesong. 2012. “‘Cantonese is not a Dialect’: Chinese Netizens’ Defence of Cantonese as a Regional Lingua Franca.” Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development 33 (5): 449–464. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Gebauer, Fabian, Marius H. Raab, and Claus-Christian Carbon. 2016. “Conspiracy Formation Is in the Detail: On the Interaction of Conspiratorial Predispositions and Semantic Cues: Conspiratorial Predispositions.” Applied Cognitive Psychology 30 (6): 917–924. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Gies, Lieve, and Maria Bortoluzzi. 2014. “Purity and Contamination in Online Popular Forensics: Amateur-Expert Readings of the Meredith Kercher Murder Case.” Continuum 28 (4): 532–544. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Gu, Mingyue M. 2011. “‘I Am not Qualified to Be a Hongkongese Because of My Accented Cantonese’: Mainland Chinese Immigrant Students in Hong Kong.” Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development 32 (6): 515–529. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Halliday, Michael A. K. 1976. “Anti-Languages.” American Anthropologist 78 (3): 570–584. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Hansen-Edwards, Jette G. 2016. “The Politics of Language and Identity: Attitudes towards Hong Kong English Pre and Post the Umbrella Movement.” Asian Englishes 18 (2): 157–164. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2017. “Language, Identity, and Politics in Hong Kong.” Georgetown Journal of International Affairs, April 4, 2017. [URL]
2019a. The Politics of English in Hong Kong: Attitudes, Identity, and Use. Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge.Google Scholar
2019b. “‘I Have to Save this Language, It’s on the Edge Like an Endangered Animal’: Perceptions of Language Threat and Linguistic Mainlandisation in Hong Kong.” Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development 1–20. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Herzfeld, Michael. 2001. “Irony and Power: Toward a Politics of Mockery in Greece.” In Irony in Action: Anthropology, Practice, and the Moral Imagination, ed. by James Fernandez, and Mary Taylor Huber, 63–82. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Hill, Jane H. 2008. The Everyday Language of White Racism. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Hung, Tony. 2012. “Hong Kong English.” In English in Southeast Asia: Features, Policy and Language in Use, ed. by Ee-Ling Low, and Azirah Hashim, 113–133. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Irvine, Judith and Susan Gal. 2000. “Language Ideology and Linguistic Differentiation.” In Regimes of Language: Ideologies, Polities and Identities, ed. by Paul V. Kroskrity, 35–83. Santa Fe, NM: School of American Press.Google Scholar
Jakobson, Roman. 1960. “Linguistics and Poetics.” In Style in Language, ed. by Thomas E. Sebeok, 350–377. Cambridge, MA: M.I.T. Press.Google Scholar
Jaworski, Adam, Nikolas Coupland, and Dariusz Galasinski. 2012. Metalanguage: Social and Ideological Perspectives. De Gruyter Mouton.Google Scholar
Jenks, Christopher, and Jerry Won Lee. 2016. “Heteroglossic Ideologies in World Englishes: An Examination of the Hong Kong Context.” International Journal of Applied Linguistics 26 (3): 384–402. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Jones, Rodney H., and Neville Li. 2016. “Evidentiary Video and ‘Professional Vision’ in the Hong Kong Umbrella Movement.” Journal of Language and Politics 15 (5): 567–588. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Karyolemou, Marilena. 1994. “Linguistic Attitudes and Metalinguistic Discourse: An Investigation in the Cypriot Press.” In Themes in Greek Linguistics, ed. by Irene Philippaki-Warburton, Katerina Nicolaidis, and Maria Sifianou, 253–260. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Lai, Mee-Ling. 2005. “Language Attitudes of the First Postcolonial Generation in Hong Kong Secondary Schools.” Language in Society 34 (3):363–388. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2011. “Cultural Identity and Language Attitudes – Into the Second Decade of Postcolonial Hong Kong.” Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development 32 (3): 249–264. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Lee, Carmen. 2007a. “Text-making Practices Beyond the Classroom Context: Private Instant Messaging in Hong Kong.” Computers and Composition 24 (3): 285–301. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2007b. “Linguistic Features of Email and ICQ Instant Messaging in Hong Kong.” In The Multilingual Internet: Language, Culture and Communication Online, ed. by Brenda Danet, and Susan Herring, 185–208. New York: Oxford University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2013. “‘My English is So Poor…so I Take Photos’. Meta-linguistic Discourse of English Online.” In Discourse 2.0: Language and New Media, ed. by Deborah Tannen, and Anna Marie Trester, 72–84. Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press.Google Scholar
Lee, Carmen, and Dennis Chau. 2018. “Language as Pride, Love, and Hate: Archiving Emotions through Multilingual Instagram Hashtags.” Discourse, Context & Media 221: 21–29. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Lee, Paul S. N., Clement Y. K. So, and Louis Leung. 2015. “Social Media and Umbrella Movement: Insurgent Public Sphere in Formation.” Chinese Journal of Communication 8 (4): 356–375. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Leung, Jasmine. 2020. “Blank Protests and ‘Number Songs’: How Hong Kongers are Trying to Get Around the New Security Law.” The Telegraph, July 11, 2020. [URL]
Li, Wei. 2011. “Moment Analysis and Translanguaging Space: Discursive Construction of Identities by Multilingual Chinese Youth in Britain.” Journal of Pragmatics 43 (5): 1222–1235. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2016. “New Chinglish and the Post-Multilingualism Challenge: Translanguaging ELF in China”. Journal of English as a Lingua Franca 5(1): 1–25. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Li, Wei, Alfred Tsang, Nick Wong, and Pedro Lok. 2020. “ Kongish Daily: Researching Translanguaging Creativity and Subversiveness.” International Journal of Multilingualism 17 (3): 309–335. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Li, Wei, and Hua Zhu. 2019. “Tranßcripting: Playful Subversion with Chinese Characters.” International Journal of Multilingualism 16 (2):145–161. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Lin, Angel. 1996. “Bilingualism or Linguistic Segregation? Symbolic Domination, Resistance and Code-switching in Hong Kong Schools.” Linguistics and Education 81: 49–84. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 1997. “Analyzing the ‘Language Problem’ Discourses in Hong Kong: How Official, Academic, and Media Discourses Construct and Perpetuate Dominant Models of Language, Learning, and Education”. Journal of Pragmatics 28 (4): 427–440. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2000. “Lively Children Trapped in an Island of Disadvantage: Verbal Play of Cantonese Working-Class Schoolboys in Hong Kong.” International Journal of the Sociology of Language 143 (1): 63.Google Scholar
Lippi-Green, Rosina. 1997. English with an Accent. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Little, Laura E. 2017. “Laughing at Censorship.” Yale Journal of Law & the Humanities 28 (2): Article 1.Google Scholar
Lou, Jackie, and Adam Jaworski. 2016. “Itineraries of Protest Signage: Semiotic Landscape and the Mythologizing of the Hong Kong Umbrella Movement.” Journal of Language and Politics 15 (5): 612–645. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Martín Rojo, Luisa. 2014. “Taking over the Square.” Journal of Language and Politics 13 (4): 623–652. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Mathews, Gordon. 1997. “Hèunggóngyàhn: On the Past, Present, and Future of Hong Kong Identity.” Bulletin of Concerned Asian Scholars 29 (3): 3–13. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Meng, Bingchun. 2011. “From Steamed Bun to Grass Mud Horse: E Gao as Alternative Political Discourse on the Chinese Internet.” Global Media and Communication 7 (1): 33–51. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Moser, David. 2018. “Keeping the Ci in Fengci: A Brief History of the Chinese Verbal Art of Xiangsheng”. In Not Just a Laughing Matter: Interdisciplinary Approaches to Political Humor in China. ed. by King-fai Tam, and Sharon R. Wesoky, 77–95. Singapore: Springer. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Niedzielski, Nancy A., and Dennis R. Preston. 2003. Folk Linguistics. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.Google Scholar
Palfreyman, David. 2005. “Othering in an English Language Program.” TESOL Quarterly 39 (2): 211–233. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Panovic, Ivan. 2017. “Arabic in a Time of Revolution: Sociolinguistic Notes from Egypt”. In Media in the Middle East: Activism, Politics, and Culture, ed. by Nele Lenze, Charlotte Schriwer, and Zubaidah Abdul Jalil, 223–256. Cham, Switzerland: Springer. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Pennington, Martha C. and Francis Yue. 1994. “English and Chinese in Hong Kong: Pre–1997 Language Attitudes.” World Englishes 13 (1):1–20. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Preston, Dennis R. 1996. “ Whaddayaknow?: The Modes of Folk Linguistic Awareness.” Language Awareness 5 (1): 40–74. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2012. “Folk Metalanguage.” In Metalanguage: Social and Ideological Perspectives, ed. by Adam Jaworski, Nikolas Coupland, and Dariusz Galasinski, 75–101. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton.Google Scholar
Rose, Margaret A. 1978. Reading the Young Marx and Engels: Poetry, Parody and the Censor. London: Croom Helm.Google Scholar
Sapountzis, Antonis, and Susan Condor. 2013. “Conspiracy Accounts as Intergroup Theories: Challenging Dominant Understandings of Social Power and Political Legitimacy.” Political Psychology 34 (5): 731–52. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Sataline, Suzanne. 2014. “Occupy Central Encounters a Class Problem.” The New Yorker, October 4, 2014. [URL]
Shiri, Sonia. 2015. “Co-Constructing Dissent in the Transient Linguistic Landscape: Multilingual Protest Signs of the Tunisian Revolution”. In Conflict, Exclusion and Dissent in the Linguistic Landscape, ed. by Rani Rubdy and Selim Ben Said, 239–259. London: Palgrave Macmillan. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Thomas, George. 1991. Linguistic Purism. London/New York: Longman.Google Scholar
Tilly, Charles. 2006. Regimes and Repertoires. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Tufekci, Zeynep. 2018. Twitter and Tear Gas: The Power and Fragility of Networked Protest. New Haven: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Varis, Piia. 2019. “Conspiracy Theorising Online: Memes as a Conspiracy Theory Genre.” Tilburg Papers in Culture Studies no. 238.Google Scholar
Varis, Piia, and Jan Blommaert. 2015. “Conviviality and Collectives on Social Media: Virality, Memes, and New Social Structures.” Multilingual Margins 2 (1): 31–45.Google Scholar
Vladimirou, Dimitra, and Juliane House. 2018. “Ludic Impoliteness and Globalisation on Twitter: “I Speak England Very Best” #agglika_Tsipra, #Tsipras #Clinton”. Journal of Pragmatics 1341: 149–62. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Vrij, Aldert. 2008. “Beliefs about Nonverbal and Verbal Cues to Deception. In Detecting Lies and Deceit, ed. by Aldert Vrij, 115–140. Chirchester: Wiley.Google Scholar
Wang, T. Y. 2019. “Generations, Political Attitudes and Voting Behavior in Taiwan and Hong Kong.” Electoral Studies 581: 80–83. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Woolard, Kathryn A., and Bambi B. Schieffelin. 1994. “Language Ideology.” Annual Review of Anthropology 23 (1): 55–82. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Wozniak, Audrey M. 2015. “River-crabbed Shitizens and Missing Knives: A Sociolinguistic Analysis of Trends in Chinese Language Use Online as a Result of Censorship.” Applied Linguistics Review 6 (1): 97–120. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Cited by (5)

Cited by five other publications

Deng, Jiange & Zhongxuan Lin
2024. The construction of Hong Kong’s “one country, two systems” in China Daily . Journal of Language and Politics DOI logo
Deschrijver, Cedric
2024. Debating representations of the 2019 Hong Kong protests online: New evidence for ‘metalinguistic density’. Journal of Pragmatics 221 ► pp. 1 ff. DOI logo
Sum Cheuk Shing, H. S.
2024. Chinese Religious Practice as Protest. The Journal of Asian Studies 83:2 ► pp. 334 ff. DOI logo
Lee, Carmen
2023. ‘English is our 2nd language, konglish is our mother tongue’: Recolonizing English Through Translingual Activism in a Social Movement. Applied Linguistics 44:5 ► pp. 900 ff. DOI logo
Theng, Andre Joseph, Vincent Wai Sum Tse & Jasper Zhao Zhen Wu
2022. Complicating solidarity. Linguistic Landscape. An international journal 8:2-3 ► pp. 264 ff. DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 5 july 2024. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.