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Much research in world Englishes centers on examining the linguistic features of a particular region. Such work can give the false impression of a collective homogeneous ideology of English within a geographic space. We refer to this limiting monolithic perspective of language ideology as ‘the single linguistic narrative.’ The present study builds on this body of work by investigating how often competing ideologies of English can circulate within a region. Focusing on the Hong Kong context, we adapt the concept of Bakhtinian heteroglossia to consider the simultaneous co‐presence of varying ideologies of English. Through an analysis of self‐narratives, we examine how Hong Kong university students construct expectations regarding how English should be used and what the colonial language means to their regional identity.

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The ordinary semiotic landscape of an unordinary place: Spatiotemporal disjunctures in Incheon's Chinatown This article examines the semiotic landscape of the Chinatown in Incheon, South Korea. Using the geosemiotic framework as a heuristic guide, we analyze how the spectacle of Chinatown is constituted through spatial, linguistic, semiotic, and material resources, and find that the unordinariness of the place is contingent on and emerges through its juxtaposition with ordinary space, practice, and language use. We suggest this apparent paradox can be understood through the process of scaling, during which signs and practices that might have been considered quotidian become monumentalised and ritualised when they are transported across timescales and spatial scales. Incheon's Chinatown then affords an opportunity to understand the semiotic and material production of 'unordinariness' through 'ordinariness'. These collective spatiotemporal disjunctures or juxtapositions reveal unexpected but nonetheless crucial intersections among language, semiotics, and nationness.