The sociolinguistics of Hong Kong and the space for Hong Kong English

Bolton, Kingsley

doi:10.1111/1467-971x.00179

Cited by 101 publications

(62 citation statements)

References 21 publications

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“…In other words, children are getting English input from these housekeepers in addition to the varieties of English they can occasionally hear from the ambience (i.e. Hong Kong English), and the institutional model which often represents either the American or British norm (Bolton 2000;2002a;b;So 1992). 3 Notwithstanding sometimes being regarded as auxiliary English teachers (Constable 1997;McArthur 2002;Poon 2006), FDHs' role in the L2…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Bad influence? – an investigation into the purported negative influence of foreign domestic helpers on children's second language English acquisition

Leung¹

2012

Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development

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This paper explores the purported negative influence of foreign domestic helpers (FDHs) on child second language acquisition (SLA) by studying Hong Kong Cantonese children's listening ability in second language (L2) English. 31 kindergarten 3 rd graders aged 4;6 to 6, and 29 1 st year secondary students aged 11-14 who have had a Filipino domestic helper at home took part in the study. In addition, 34 youngsters (20 in kindergarten, 14 in secondary) who did not have a Filipino helper participated as controls. Results from two listening tasks (picture choosing task, sound discrimination task) suggest that informants do not differ from the control in their abilities to listen to American-, British-, and Hong Kong-English, and that they are better at listening to Filipino accented English than the control. These findings cast doubts on the anecdotal belief of the harmful effect FDHs have on children's language acquisition including an L2. Moreover, the additional effect of being familiar with another variety of English is arguably a desirable outcome given that English is used as a lingua franca among non-native speakers on a daily basis in this highly globalised world.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Bad influence? – an investigation into the purported negative influence of foreign domestic helpers on children's second language English acquisition

Leung¹

2012

Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development

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“…Bolton and Kwok 1990;Hung 2000;Deterding, Wong and Kirkpatrick 2008). These accounts of phonological features have followed the imperative to describe 'new varieties of English' or NVEs on their own terms, and imply the existence -at least at the formal level -of a local variety of English that shows 'autonomy and creativity' (Bolton 2000). The local scholar Andy Kirkpatrick has argued that Hong Kong needs 'local bilingual models' for English teaching (Kirkpatrick 2007b: 376).…”

Section: Topic and Contextmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…This would help to begin the process of description and codification called for by Kirkpatrick (2007b), and would also help to establish a link between the World Englishes (WE) movement, with its pluricentric orientation towards the description of new varieties of English, and ELF. However, the compatibility of the two approaches has been questioned by, for example, Berns (2008), who notes that the promotion of a 'common core' of pronunciation features sits somewhat uneasily with the valorisation of 'autonomy and creativity' (Bolton 2000) in the World Englishes movement.…”

Section: The Lfc and Its Relationship With Elf And World Englishesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…That NVEs are an important area of study is undeniable, but there is often a wide gulf between the discourse of linguists and that of the rest of the population, as noted above. Even in the research literature there seems to be more doubt about the status of HKE than of other varieties such as Singapore English, although the consensus of recent research is that HKE is an 'emerging' variety that is starting to develop its own norms (see, for example, Bolton 2000;Setter 2008). This section will examine the status of HKE within a broader discussion of language attitudes in Hong Kong.…”

Section: Hong Kong English: Status and Attitudesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…His assessment of Hong Kong English is that it is currently at stage 3, with some traces of stage 2 still observable (Schneider 2003: 258). Evidence for nativization includes the educational policy objective of 'mass bilingualism' (Bolton 2000, in Schneider 2003, and the identity construction of Cantonese Hongkongers who no longer have a colonial 'them vs. us' mindset and instead display a 'distinctive and healthy Hong Kong identity' (Hyland 1997: 207, in Schneider 2007.…”

Section: Assessing Variety Statusmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Phonological features of Hong Kong English : patterns of variation and effects on local acceptability

Sewell¹

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Phonological Features of Hong Kong English: Patterns of Variation and Effects on Local Acceptability by SEWELL, Andrew John Doctor of PhilosophyThe changing dynamics of international communication in English have led to a intense questioning of the relevance of native-speaker pronunciation models in language teaching and testing. In addition, the World Englishes approach to local varieties has increased their level of recognition. Both of these developments suggest that English pronunciation models need to be reviewed, and Hong Kong represents an interesting case study. Although it has been claimed that Hong Kong English is at the 'nativization' stage, the existence of exonormative attitudes towards English is also well known. Two important questions arise from this inherent tension, neither of which has been intensively addressed in previous studies. Firstly, although many of the features of Hong Kong English pronunciation have been described, patterns of inter-speaker variation have not been investigated in detail. Secondly, the attitudes of Hong Kong English users towards the phonological features of their own variety have not been studied in ways that take account of such variation.This dissertation addresses both of these questions by being features-based in approach and using local listeners to evaluate accent samples. After an initial review of the features of Hong Kong English pronunciation, a preliminary study surveys the occurrence of consonantal phonological features within a mini-corpus of speech samples taken from local television programmes. Its findings are presented in the form of an implicational scale, which not only shows the relative frequencies with which different features occurred, but also indicates the existence of implicational patterns of co-occurrence. In the main study, twelve authentic accent samples (eleven Hong Kong speakers and one British speaker) were presented to 52 first-year undergraduate students for evaluation as to their acceptability, defined here as acceptability for pedagogical purposes.Multivariate statistical analysis discovered firstly that phonological 'errors', as marked by the student listeners, were the most important measured factor in determining the acceptability scores, and secondly that only certain types of 'error' or 'feature' had significant effects. These features were either related to L1 transfer or involved other salient phenomena such as idiosyncratic alterations to syllable structure. The explanatory part of the study includes acceptability as one of the factors determining feature persistence, in an 'ecological' or 'evolutionary' model of L2 phonology acquisition and development that combines the findings of the preliminary and main studies. Among the other factors that determine feature persistence or disappearance, salience, intelligibility and markedness are invoked as important influences.The acceptability data also has pedagogical implications, in that local listeners did not give the British accent the highest acceptability rating. ...

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English as Lingua Franca

Meierkord¹

2012

The Encyclopedia of Applied Linguistics

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The sociolinguistics of Hong Kong and the space for Hong Kong English

Cited by 101 publications

References 21 publications

Bad influence? – an investigation into the purported negative influence of foreign domestic helpers on children's second language English acquisition

Bad influence? – an investigation into the purported negative influence of foreign domestic helpers on children's second language English acquisition

Phonological features of Hong Kong English : patterns of variation and effects on local acceptability

English as Lingua Franca

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