Download Free Language Society And Culture In Hong Kong Book in PDF and EPUB Free Download. You can read online Language Society And Culture In Hong Kong and write the review.

This book discusses the notion of “Hong Kong as Method” as it relates to the rise of China in the context of Asianization. It explores new Hong Kong imaginaries with regard to the complex relationship between the local, the national and the global. The major theoretical thrust of the book is to address the reconfiguration of Hong Kong’s culture and society in an age of global modernity from the standpoints of different disciplines, exploring the possibilities of approaching Hong Kong as a method. Through critical inquiries into different fields related to Hong Kong’s culture and society, including gender, resistance and minorities, various perspectives on the country’s culture and society can be re-assessed. New directions and guidelines related to Hong Kong are also presented, offering a unique resource for researchers and students in the fields of cultural studies, media studies, postcolonial studies, globalization and Asian studies.
This volume offers a view of the linguistic situation in Hong Kong in the final years of the twentieth century, as it enters the post-colonial era. In the chapters of this book, scholars from Hong Kong and around the world present a contemporary profile of Chinese, English, and other languages in dynamic interaction in this major international economic centre. Authors survey usage of different languages and attitudes towards them among students, teachers, and the general population based on census data, newpapers, language diaries, interviews, and questionnaires. They address issues of code-mixing, the shift from English-medium to Chinese-medium education, the place of Putonghua in the local language mix, and the language of minority groups such as Hong Kong Indians.This wide-ranging group of original studies provides a social and historical perspective from which to consider developments in language among the past, present, and future populations of Hong Kong.
An innovative text which adopts the tools of cultural studies to provide a fresh approach to the study of Chinese language, culture and society. The book tackles areas such as grammar, language, gender, popular culture, film and the Chinese diaspora and employs the concepts of social semiotics to extend the ideas of language and reading. Covering a range of cultural texts, it will help to break down the boundaries around the ideas and identities of East and West and provide a more relevant analysis of the Chinese and China.
Read the Cultural Other contains studies on non-Western discourse. It has two principal aims. Firstly, it argues that the study of non-Western, non-White, and Third-World discourses should become a legitimate, necessary, and routine part of international discourse scholarship. Hitherto, non-Western, non-White, and Third-Word discourses have been relegated and marginalized to a 'local', 'particular', or 'other' place in (or, one might argue, outside) the mainstream. To reclaim their place, the book deconstructs the rhetoric of universalism and the continued preoccupation with Western discourse in the profession, and stresses the cultural nature of discourse, both ordinary and disciplinary, as it outlines a culturally pluralist vision. Secondly, in order to take the multicultural view seriously, it explores the complexity, diversity, and forms of otherness of non-Western discourse by examining the case of China and Hong Kong's discourses of the decolonization of the latter. Far too often, non-Western discourse has been stereotyped as externally discrete, internally homogeneous, and formally containable within a 'universal', 'general', or 'integrated' model. The present work focuses on China and Hong Kong's discourses, which have been marginalized by their Western counterparts. Through culturally eclectic linguistic analysis and local cultural analysis, it identifies and highlights the specific ways of speaking of China and Hong Kong - their concepts, concerns, aspirations, resistance, verbal strategies, etc. - with respect to similar or different issues. The culturally pluralist view and analytical practice proffered here call for a radical cultural change in international scholarship on language, communication, and discourse.
The relationship between government and society in Hong Kong has become an intensely debated topic as the complexities of governance grow and the old strategies of consensus building without genuine public participation fail to satisfy. Increasingly interventionist, yet lacking democratic credentials, the Hong Kong SAR government finds itself more and more limited in its capacity to implement policies and less able to rely on traditional allies. A society dissatisfied with old forms of governance has become ever more ready to mobilize itself outside of the formal political structures. This collection of studies by leading scholars examines the Hong Kong government's efforts to reposition itself in the economy and society under the pressures of globalization, economic and political restructuring and the rise of the civil society. Drawing on changing theoretical conceptions of state, market and citizenship and on comparisons with other Asian economies,Repositioning the Hong Kong Governmentoffers new interpretations of the problems of governance in Hong Kong and puts forward positive suggestions for resolving them.
Bringing together scholarship on issues relating to language, culture, and identity, with a special focus on Asian countries, this volume makes an important contribution in terms of analyzing and demonstrating how language is closely linked with crucial social, political, and economic forces, particularly the tensions between the demands of globalization and local identity. A particular feature is the inclusion of countries that have been under-represented in the research literature, such as Nepal, Bangladesh, Brunei Darussalam, Pakistan, Cambodia, Vietnam, and Korea. The book is organized in three sections: Globalization and its Impact on Language Policies, Culture, and Identity Language Policy and the Social (Re)construction of National Cultural Identity Language Policy and Language Politics: The Role of English. Unique in its attention to how the domination of English is being addressed in relation to cultural values and identity by non-English speaking countries in a range of sociopolitical contexts, this volume will help readers to understand the impact of globalization on non-English speaking countries, particularly developing countries, which differ significantly from contexts in the West in their cultural orientations and the way identities are being constructed. Language Policy, Culture, and Identity in Asian Contexts will interest scholars and research students in the areas of language policy, education, sociolinguistics, applied linguistics, and critical linguistics. It can be adopted in graduate and advanced undergraduate courses on language policy, language in society, and language education.
The focus of this book is on the impact of politics on language and identity in Hong Kong. The book is the first study to track real time language attitude changes against a divisive political landscape. It is also the most comprehensive study of language attitudes in Hong Kong to date, taking place over four years with over 1600 participants. Through both survey and interview data, a multifaceted portrait of language change in progress is presented, providing a more nuanced and complex view of language and identity than has previously been presented. The book examines the status of Hong Kong English in the light of attitudes towards Cantonese, English, and Putonghua, providing a deeper analysis of the linguistic complexity of Hong Kong; it can be argued that one cannot understand attitudes towards Hong Kong English without fully understanding the status and use of English in Hong Kong today. The book also presents a complex examination of language attitudes in Hong Kong by focusing not only on the what of language attitudes, but also the question of for whom, through an analysis of language attitudes by gender, age, identity, and speaking HKE.
This volume gives an up-to-date account of the language situation and social context in multilingual Hong Kong. After an in-depth, interpretive analysis of various language contact phenomena, it shows why it is such a tall order for Hongkongers to live up to the Special Administrative Region government’s language policy goalpost, ‘biliteracy and trilingualism’. A detailed contrastive analysis between Cantonese and (a) English, (b) Modern Written Chinese, and (c) Putonghua helps explain the nature of the linguistic and acquisitional challenges involved. Economic forces and sociopolitical realities helped shape the ‘mother tongue education’ or ‘dual MoI streaming’ policy since September 1998. The book provides a critical review of the significant milestones and key policy documents from the early 1990s, and outlines the concerns of stakeholders at the receiving end. Another MoI debate concerns the feasibility and desirability of teaching Chinese in Putonghua (TCP). Based on a critical review of the TCP literature and recent psycholinguistic and neuroscience research, the language-in-education policy implications are discussed, followed by a few recommendations. Hongkongers of South Asian descent saw their life chances curtailed as a result of the post-1997 changes in the language requirements for gaining access to civil service positions and higher education. Based on a study of 15 South Asian undergraduate students’ prior language learning experiences, recommendations are made to help redress that social inequity problem.