The Contribution of Minority Languages and Dialects to Hong Kong’s Linguistic Landscape

Professor Bacon-Shone, John   (Principal Investigator (PI))

Dr Richards Ben   (Co-Investigator)

Professor Bolton Kingsley   (Co-Investigator)

Dr Bhatia Aditi   (Co-Investigator)

Dr Lee Siu-lun   (Co-Investigator)

18

2019-12-09

2021-06-08

717090

The Contribution of Minority Languages and Dialects to Hong Kong’s Linguistic Landscape

Contribution, Hong Kong, Linguistic Landscape, Minority Languages and Dialects

Others - relating to Social Sciences

Humanities & Social Sciences (H)

2019.A8.086.19C

Public Policy Research Funding Scheme

2019

Completed

The history, geography, and demographic composition of Hong Kong have all contributed to the unique linguistic profile of the Hong Kong community. While much previous research has concentrated on issues connected with official languages of the HKSAR (Cantonese, Putonghua and English), recent research on multilingualism in the community has also drawn attention to the existence of ethnic and linguistic minorities in the local community. As demonstrated by this team in a previous Public Policy Research Funding Scheme report (available from the Social Sciences Research Centre website), Hong Kong is home to a large number of minority languages (we listed a total of 27 separate languages identified in recent census results). Language learning and language use are key areas of public policy debate, with rather less discussion of the role of languages other than the official languages in our society. Despite the very different economic and social contexts of language use by linguistic minorities, there has been little empirical investigation of the ways in which language, education, employment, and engagement in the community interact, or the ways in which these interactions may be very different for those using minority languages. We intend to use a mixed-methods approach to investigate such issues. One part will be quantitative, and use new information collected in the 2016 by-census on written and spoken languages in Hong Kong society. This analysis of the 2016 by-census will be done with reference to previous census/by-census data, in order to identify demographic trends in relation to language groupings in the community. In addition, we will include a qualitative component: case studies of seven areas of Hong Kong where there are high proportions of residents using minority languages. Another issue to be investigated by both quantitative and qualitative methods will be how language and education relate to employment and engagement with the community amongst those using minority languages, with particular reference to the benefits of reading and writing different languages in Hong Kong. The results will be highly significant for both Hong Kong and for the international frontline of research on multilingual societies. For the Hong Kong government, this project has a strong potential to inform language policy in relation to bilingualism and multilingualism, in both educational and other official contexts.