Position of Putonghua in contemporary Hong Kong

Abstract

Hong Kong’s language policy has come under close scrutiny since the creation of the region as a colony of Great Britain in 1843. Throughout Hong Kong’s time as a colony of Great Britain, and post-1997 as a Special Administrative Region of the People’s Republic of China, language use and the policy that aims to dictate this use has told us a great deal about Hong Kong’s hierarchy of socioeconomic power and the languages used by those in ’high’ and ’low’ positions on this hierarchy.

Previous research into language policy in Hong Kong makes note of the ways in which the colonial and postcolonial governments have enacted policies aimed at directing the people of Hong Kong towards specific patterns of language use. Since the transfer of sovereignty in 1997, the role of Putonghua in contemporary Hong Kong has been an issue of debate, both within the public domain and within the Hong Kong Legislative Council. As the official language of the People’s Republic of China, the role of Putonghua in contemporary Hong Kong requires closer analysis. Current policy places Putonghua within a linguistic trichotomy alongside English and Cantonese - the ’three languages’ of Hong Kong. The ways in which Putonghua is treated in the Legislative Council, in the education system, and in the daily lives of Hong Kong’s citizens requires further exploration.

In order to explore the nature of the role of Putonghua in contemporary Hong Kong society, this thesis makes use of two complementary methodologies that explore the use of Putonghua in different domains. The first of these methodologies is rooted in the tradition of Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA). The second of these methodologies is based on corpus linguistic methods, through the creation of and subsequent analysis of a corpus of job advertisements, and an analysis of the position of Putonghua in these job adverts - its necessity or lack thereof.

This thesis comprises four papers in total, three research papers and one review article, that collaboratively shed light on the status of Putonghua in contemporary Hong Kong.