The Decline and Fall of English in Hong Kong's Legislative Council

Autor/in	Evans, Stephen
Titel	The Decline and Fall of English in Hong Kong's Legislative Council
Quelle	In: Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development, 35 (2014) 5, S.479-496 (18 Seiten)Infoseite zur Zeitschrift PDF als Volltext Verfügbarkeit
Sprache	englisch
Dokumenttyp	gedruckt; online; Zeitschriftenaufsatz
ISSN	0143-4632
DOI	10.1080/01434632.2013.873802
Schlagwörter	Foreign Countries; Sino Tibetan Languages; English (Second Language); Second Language Learning; Language Usage; Mandarin Chinese; Social Change; Economic Change; Computational Linguistics; Government (Administrative Body); Foreign Policy; Language Planning; Multilingualism; Language Role; Discourse Analysis; Hong Kong + Suchen Sie Ihr Suchwort? Ausland; English as second language; English; Second Language; Englisch als Zweitsprache; Zweitsprachenerwerb; Sprachgebrauch; Sozialer Wandel; Ökonomischer Wandel; Linguistics; Computerlinguistik; Government; Regierung; Außenpolitik; Sprachwechsel; Mehrsprachigkeit; Multilingualismus; Diskursanalyse; Hongkong
Abstract	This article presents the findings of a corpus-based study of the use of English vis-à-vis Cantonese and Putonghua in Hong Kong's Legislative Council in the past four decades. The objective of the study was to track the changing fortunes of the three languages in a key government institution during a period of unprecedented political, economic and social change. This was accomplished by analysing a 91-million-word corpus of Council proceedings derived from "Hong Kong Hansard," which is the verbatim record of Council meetings. For the greater part of the colonial era (1842-1997), English was the sole medium of communication in the chamber. It was only in 1972 that Cantonese-speaking members were permitted to use the city's majority language in Council debates. In that year every speech was in English. Forty years later, only 0.38% of the addresses were in the colonial language, the overwhelming majority being in Cantonese (99.45%), with only a handful in Putonghua. This article describes and discusses the rise of Cantonese and the concomitant demise of English since the early 1970s, with a particular focus on the transitional 1990s, and speculates on the roles of Cantonese and Putonghua in the legislature in the years ahead. (As Provided).
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Erfasst von	ERIC (Education Resources Information Center), Washington, DC
Update	2017/4/10