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Part of
Analysing Chinese Language and Discourse across Layers and Genres
Edited by Wei Wang
[Studies in Chinese Language and Discourse 13] 2020
► pp. 119–146

Chapter 7
Understanding stancetaking through gestures and linguistic practices in a public political debate in Hong Kong

| University of California, Los Angeles

Hong Kong has enjoyed partial universal suffrage in both District Council election as well as the Legislative Council election since the handover in 1997. This paper looks into the 2016 Hong Kong Legislative Council electoral debate with the combination of discourse analysis using the Stance Triangle (Du Bois 2007) and gesture-unit analysis (Kendon 2004) to study how verbal and non-verbal activities are being strategically organized to project both affective and epistemic stances by the elected incumbent, Alvin Yeung, and his opponents. The findings suggest Cantonese utterance final particles and gestures are strategically and aptly employed to achieve both expressive and communicative purposes in the political debates where they can not only elucidate their policy agenda but also defeat the opponents and win the votes.

Keywords: political discourse, Hong Kong political debates, Cantonese utterance final particles, gesture-unit analysis, Stance Triangle
Article outline
  • Background of the study
  • Methodology
    • Gesture analysis
      • The status of gestures in human interaction
      • Gesture units, gesture phrases, the phases of gestural action
    • Stancetaking and the stance triangle
      • The stance triangle
      • Affective and epistemic stances
    • Data
  • Findings
    • Individual Speech
    • Analyzing the individual speech with the Stance Triangle
    • Interim summary for stancetaking in individual speech
    • The debate between Alvin Yeung and Holden Chow
    • Analyzing the debate with the Stance Triangle
    • Interim summary for the debate
  • Conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 28 August 2020
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/scld.13.07wan
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