Tracking language attitudes in postcolonial Hong Kong: An interplay of localization, mainlandization, and internationalization

Abstract

Four years after the sovereignty of Hong Kong was returned from Britain to China, a survey was conducted in 2001 to examine the attitudes of students toward Cantonese (the vernacular language), English (the colonizer's and international language), and Putonghua (the new ruler's language) in the early postcolonial era of Hong Kong. Eight years after, as Hong Kong moved into the second decade after the political handover, which has been characterized by an intense interplay of localization, mainlandization, and internationalization, a follow-up study was launched in 2009 to trace the changes of language attitudes over the past years. This paper reports on a comparison between the results of the two surveys, which shows 'Pragmatic trilingualism' as a future trend for the younger generation of Hong Kong. Having experienced the postcolonial changes for twelve years, informants of the 2009 study also showed significantly more positive attitudes toward Putonghua than their counterparts in 2001, as the language starts to take root in Hong Kong society along with the huge economic and demographic power of China.

Non-native accents and simultaneous interpreting quality perceptions

“…Native Cantonese speakers have differing perceptions of the various languages most commonly spoken in Hong Kong. In Lai's study comparing the attitudes of people in Hong Kong to Cantonese, English and Mandarin, her research respondents indicated closest emotional identification with Cantonese, perceived English as the language of the highest instrumental value and social status, and ranked Mandarin lowest in terms of both emotional identification and instrumental perspectives (Lai 2012).…”

A Comparative Study of Language Attitudes in Hong Kong: Towards English, Cantonese and Putonghua

“…) and a lot of studies in Hong Kong take account of the investigation of identity in their studies (such as Lai, 2005Lai, , 2012. As concerning the current study, it is a good clue for us to find out how local students identify themselves and how they are identified by the Mainland students based on the results discussed above.…”

Language Attitudes and Identities in Multilingual China

“…Accord-ing to the 1971 census, it was clear that the younger the speakers, the more likely they were to use Cantonese as their usual language (Gibbons 1987). Statistics from subsequent censuses in 1991, 1996, and 2001 show that over 95 % of the population reported competence in Cantonese (Pierson 2003), and in the 2006 census, 90.8 % reported Cantonese as their usual language (0.9 % reported Putonghua) (Lai 2012). Cantonese has apparently been established as the most commonly used spoken language in Hong Kong.…”

“…Lai (2012) claims that it is for such reason that more than a decade of mandatory mother-tongue education has not resulted in more positive attitudes towards Cantonese than those held by the earlier generations. On the contrary, the recent relaxation of the mother-tongue education policy even seems to suggest that government officials consider it a mistake to adopt Cantonese as the medium of instruction.…”