Name: Annemari Kettunen Date: 7.5.2013 PRO GRADU THESIS LANGUAGE OF THE FUTURE, LANGUAGE OF THE PRC – REPRESENTATIONS OF PUTONGHUA IN SOUTH CHINA MORNING POST Centre for East Asian Studies Faculty of Social Sciences University of Turku UNIVERSITY OF TURKU Centre for East Asian Studies/Faculty of Social Sciences KETTUNEN, ANNEMARI: Language of the Future, Language of the PRC – Representations of Putonghua in South China Morning Post Pro gradu –thesis, 146 p. East Asian Studies May 2013 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ As the national language of the PRC, the world's growing economic power and the sovereign of Hong Kong, Putonghua is a language with multiple facets of relevance for the current Special Administrative Region. This paper seeks to explore and explain different representations of Putonghua in Hong Kong's leading English-language newspaper South China Morning Post in articles published between January 2012 and February 2013. The representations are studied in the context of the different discourses in which they appear, some of which feature language(s) as a central theme and some more marginally. An overview is first presented of the scholarly research on the most important developments in Hong Kong's complex language scene from the beginnings of the colony until present day, with the aim of detecting developments and attitudes with potential relevance or parallels to the context of Putonghua today. The paper then reflects on the media and its role in producing and perpetuating discourses in the society, before turning to more practical considerations on Hong Kong's English and Chinese language media and the role of South China Morning Post in it. The methods used in analysing the discourses are those of discourse analysis, with textual analysis as its starting point, in which close attention is paid to linguistic forms as the concrete representations of meanings in a text. Particularly the immediate contexts of the appearances of the word “Putonghua” in the articles were studied carefully to detect vocabulary, grammar and semantical choices as signs of different discourses, potentially also revealing fundamental underlying assumptions and other “hidden meanings” in the text. Some of the most distinctive discourses in which different representations of Putonghua appeared were the Instrumental value for the individual (in which Putonghua was represented as a form of social capital); Othering of the mainlanders (in which Putonghua served as a concrete marker of distinction); Belonging to China (Putonghua as a symbol of unity); and Cultural distinctiveness of Hong Kong (Putonghua as a threat to Hong Kong's history and culture, as embodied in Cantonese). Some of these discourses were more prominent than others, and for example the discourse of Belonging to China was relatively rarely enacted in Hongkongers' voices. In general, the findings were not surprising in the light of the history, but showed a fair degree of consistency with what has been written earlier about the languages and attitudes towards them in Hong Kong. It has often been noted that Putonghua and its relation with Cantonese is a matter linked with the social identity of the colony and its citizens. While it appeared that there were no strict taboos in the representations of Putonghua in the societal context, the possibility of self-censorship cannot be ruled out as a factor toning down political discourses in the representations. Keywords: Hong Kong, languages, discourse, media Abstract Table of Contents 1. Introduction..................................................................................................................1 1.1. Preface: origins of Putonghua – national language of the PRC...................3 2. Languages in Hong Kong............................................................................................4 2.1. Pre-Handover...............................................................................................5 2.1.1. Early days.........................................................................................5 2.1.2. Political movement for the promotion of Chinese in the 1960s-1980s...........................................................................7 2.1.3. Language-in-education policies.......................................................8 2.1.4. Putonghua in the colonial times.....................................................11 2.2. Post-Handover............................................................................................12 2.2.1. Official language policies since 1997............................................13 2.2.1.1. Effects and public responses...........................................16 2.2.2. Cantonese.......................................................................................18 2.2.3. English...........................................................................................19 2.2.4. Putonghua......................................................................................21 2.2.4.1. National language vs. dialects/minority languages in the PRC......................................................................21 2.2.4.2. Hong Kong's relations with the mainland.......................22 2.2.4.3. Role and usage of Putonghua in Hong Kong..................24 2.2.4.4. Parallel developments in the written medium: the case of traditional versus simplified characters........27 2.3. Summary: languages in Hong Kong – extracting the most important themes........................................................................................................28 3. Power of the media....................................................................................................31 3.1. Theoretical considerations.........................................................................31 3.1.1. Contextual factors shaping what is represented in the media........33 3.2. Media in Hong Kong and South China Morning Post...............................34 3.2.1. Chinese and English-language media in Hong Kong....................34 3.2.2. Press freedom and self-censorship in Hong Kong media..............37 3.2.3. Spheres in the media…..................................................................40 3.2.5. South China Morning Post: Characteristics and editorial line.......41 3.3. Relevance for the current paper.................................................................43 4. Methods and data-gathering.....................................................................................45 4.1. From textual analysis to Critical Discourse Analysis................................45 4.2. Data-gathering process...............................................................................48 4.3. General remarks on the data – topics and temporal distribution...............51 5. Analysis: Representations of Putonghua in newspaper articles............................55 5.1. Putonghua and the advantage to the individual.........................................56 5.1.1. Putonghua as a qualification requirement for jobs….....................57 5.1.2. Expatriates, language-learning and Putonghua..............................65 5.1.3. Communicative value…................................................................68 5.1.4. Comparison with English: positive vs. negative...........................69 5.2. Putonghua and mainlanders in Hong Kong – marker of difference..........72 5.2.1.Putonghua as an illustration of the increased presence of mainlanders in Hong Kong...............................................75 5.2.2. Person who has done something dubious introduced as Putonghua-speaker...................................................76 5.2.3. Putonghua-speakers treated differently in Hong Kong..................77 5.2.4. Expected language of communication with different people.........82 5.3. Putonghua and the society..........................................................................85 5.3.1. Instrumental societal discourse - “Hong Kong's competitiveness”....................................................86 5.3.2. Belonging to China/national language...........................................89 5.3.3. Putongua as a threat to Cantonese and the cultural heritage of Hong Kong................................................................................93 5.3.4. Reconciliation..............................................................................102 5.4. Putonghua and education.........................................................................106 5.5. Putonghua and (Simplified) characters....................................................112 5.6. Voices.......................................................................................................115 5.7. Configurations of discourses: case study of three articles.......................116 6. Conclusions...............................................................................................................123 6.1. Summary of the paper and discussion on the findings............................123 6.2. Limitations of the study and suggestions for further research.................129 Bibliography.................................................................................................................131 Secondary sources...........................................................................................131 Primary sources...............................................................................................137