From ‘the world of Suzie Wong’ to ‘Asia's world city’: tracing the development of bilingualism in Hong Kong's linguistic landscape (1957–2014)

ABSTRACT

The paper examines the development of bilingualism in Hong Kong's linguistic landscape. Digital photo archive of the Hong Kong Year Book collection which illustrated signage was analysed to identify changes in language preferences between 1957 and 2014. The transformation in signage from monolingual Chinese to bilingual Chinese-English in Hong Kong's linguistic landscape was a gradual social process, with a transition period of the ‘Westernisation’ of Chinese signage between 1960 and 1979 before a fully bilingual linguistic landscape emerged between 1980 and 1996. In the current post-colonial era, bilingualism has remained the dominant model of signage in Hong Kong's linguistic landscape, also marked by an increase in sector-specific language choices, including monolingual English signage in high-end shopping areas and written Cantonese (rather than standard written Chinese) in advertising discourse. Power relations and collective identity were key drivers of the evolution of Hong Kong's bilingual linguistic landscape. Monitoring the ongoing development of sector-specific language choices may throw light on whether today's language preferences are indicative of global culture with its heterogeneity has come to dominate or whether we are seeing a tug of war between globalisation and localism.

KEYWORDS:

• Linguistic landscape
• Hong Kong
• bilingualism
• power relations
• collective identity

Acknowledgements

We thank Professor Hans J. Ladegaard, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, for his inspiration and encouragement of the paper based on a doctoral programme submission. We also thank Dr Si Chen, Research Assistant Professor, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, for her comments on the research methodology and statistics. And we are most grateful for the anonymous reviewers’ inspiring comments.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

ORCID

Alicia S. H. Wong http://orcid.org/0000-0002-9063-2102

Susan S. S. Chan http://orcid.org/0000-0003-3059-8229