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Abstract
This article explores the impact of Hong Kong's transition from British colony to Chinese Special Administrative Region on patterns of language use in the domain of professional employment. In particular, it presents the findings of a large-scale multifaceted investigation into the roles of Putonghua, Cantonese, written Chinese and English in the civil service, government-related organisations, and public and private companies. The study therefore offers much-needed perspectives on the viability of China's ‘one country, two systems’ framework and the vitality of Hong Kong's ‘biliterate and trilingual’ policy more than a decade after the handover. The findings indicate that English remains the default medium of written professional communication in both the public and private sectors, while Cantonese is the unmarked medium of intra-ethnic spoken communication. Despite Hong Kong's political and economic reintegration with the mainland, written Chinese and Putonghua currently play only a limited role in business and professional communication.
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank four anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments on an earlier draft of the article. I also would like to thank my colleagues Professor Winnie Cheng, Dr Gail Forey, Dr Chris Green, Dr Li Lan, Dr David Qian and Professor Martin Warren for their assistance with the collection of the data. The qualitative component was supported by a grant from the Research Grants Council of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, China (Project No. PolyU 5418/08H). The quantitative component was supported by a PolyU research grant (A-PA9N).