Two decades of decolonization and renationalization: the evolutionary dynamics of Hong Kong English and an update of its functions and status^*

^*This paper is intellectually indebted and affectionately dedicated to my colleague, Professor Stephen Evans of the Department of English, who passed away in March 2017.

Abstract

This paper is an update of Luke and Richards and Li on the functions and status of English in postcolonial Hong Kong. Two decades after the handover, relatively little has changed except in the education domain. The ‘mother tongue education’ policy implemented from September 1998, whereby primary school-leavers are streamed into Chinese-medium and English-medium secondary schools, was ‘fine-tuned’ in 2009. Chinese-medium schools are given the flexibility to introduce English-medium classes to students under specific conditions. Hong Kong English is one of Edgar Schneider's 17 case studies of the evolutionary dynamics of postcolonial Englishes. The paper reviews a critique of that Dynamic Model based on Stephen Evans’s extensive diachronic evidence of HKE spanning from the 1850s to the 2010s. While ascertaining the heuristic value of Schneider’s analytical framework, Evans’s well-triangulated studies point toward the need for alternative periodization of HKE along the five uni-directional phases of evolutionary development of postcolonial Englishes. Evans’s analysis of Butler’s five criteria for determining the emergence of a localized variety of English will also be discussed.

Keywords:

• Hong Kong English
• postcolonial Englishes
• Dynamic Model
• evolutionary dynamics
• medium of instruction

Notes

^* This paper is intellectually indebted and affectionately dedicated to my colleague, Professor Stephen Evans of the Department of English, who passed away in March 2017.

1. Emailing or texting among educated bilinguals tends to be English-dominant (e.g. civil servants and employees of government-affiliated organizations, Evans, 2010, 2016, pp. 20–22). Likewise, court cases, while conducted increasingly in Cantonese (especially at the lower courts), are invariably documented in English (Evans, 2016, p. 29).

2. Association of Hong Kong Agencies for Migrant Workers Limited, 1/2017, http://ahka.org/statistic-of-foreign-domestic-helpers.html, accessed 7 October 2017.

3. According to the ‘mother tongue education’ policy implemented since September 1998, only about 30 percent of secondary school-leavers are eligible for English-medium instruction (EMI). The rest have to study through the medium of Chinese (i.e. CMI). In Hong Kong SAR, as in Macao SAR, ‘Chinese’ refers to vernacular Cantonese and standard Chinese, the latter being more closely aligned with Mandarin and is written in traditional characters (as in Taiwan, e.g. 萬里長城, maan²² lei²³ coeng²¹ sing²¹, ‘The Great Wall’), as opposed to simplified characters in mainland China and Singapore (e.g. 万里长城).

4. With effect from September 2017, compulsory education has been extended from 12 to 15 years, whereupon preschool education (age 4–6) has come under more stringent government regulations.

5. Apart from Hong Kong (East Asia), the other 16 case studies are: Fiji, Australia, New Zealand (Pacific Rim); the Philippines, Malaysia, Singapore, India (South and Southeast Asia); South Africa, Kenya, Tanzania, Nigeria, Cameroon (Africa); Barbados, Jamaica (the Caribbean); Canada, USA (North America). Of these, American English is given more extended coverage (Chapter 6, pp.251–308).

6. There is some evidence that CMI students who made it to an English-medium degree programme are disadvantaged in their learning abilities compared with their EMI peers (Evans, 2016, pp. 46–47).

7. Bolton’s (2003) analysis predates the publication of Cummings and Wolf’s (2011) A Dictionary of Hong Kong English. Words from the Fragrant Harbour.