Language policy, Language Attitudes and Identity in Hong Kong Vian Yuen Abstract The year 2017 has witnessed the 20th anniversary of the return of Hong Kong to Chinese Sovereignty. Over the past two decades, the education reform brought by the handover posed a great impact on the school curriculum and students’ learning. The biliterate and trilingual language policy, which aims to train Hong Kong students to be biliterate in Chinese and English and trilingual in both dialects of Chinese (Cantonese and Putonghua) and English, is particularly controversial. This paper examines the status and roles of Cantonese, Putonghua and English in colonial and postcolonial eras in Hong Kong. As the use of language is often intertwined with power relations and cultural identity construction, the link between people’s attitudes towards the three languages and their cultural identity construction will also be discussed. Keywords: Language attitude, language policy, status of English Introduction From a small fishing village to a world-famous cosmopolitan city, Hong Kong has experienced a series of dramatic changes in the past two centuries. This year, in particular, Hong Kong marks 20 years since its handover to China from Britain. It is noteworthy that the handover not only impacts on aspects such as economics and politics, but also education, especially the language policies. With critical political and cultural changes in the past few decades, the city has evolved into a more multilingual society, dominating by three major languages of Cantonese, English and Mandarin. Since language is not only a tool for communication and plays an important role in the construction of identity and affecting social power relations (Warschauer, 2000), the focus of this paper is to examine the status and roles of the three languages in Hong Kong society, and how people’s attitudes towards the languages can be linked to the pragmatic values of languages and cultural identity construction. 1 Language Policy & Community Response: from Diglossic to Biliterate Trilingual a. Colonial Period: Diglossic As the majority of population was ethnic Chinese from Canton, Cantonese has been the dominant and socially preferred language in Hong Kong. The city, however, has never been monolingual as some people also spoke English and other dialects of the Chinese language such as Putonghua. By evaluating government census data dated from 1911 to 1991, Bacon-Shone & Bolton (1998) asserted that Hong Kong has always been a multilingual community, but Putonghua, the national language, was less influential compared to English and Cantonese in colonial period due to its little use in formal and informal contexts. Wright (2008) suggested diglossia existed in colonial Hong Kong because English was the only official language before 1974. It is noteworthy that the term ‘diglossia’ (Ferguson, 1959) instead of ‘bilingual’ is used here as English and Cantonese were used in different domains, with the former as the high variety and the later the low variety. Although Chinese also became an official language in 1974, there were significant differences in their functions. English can be deemed as high variety as it was used in official, political, and more importantly, in educational domains. According to figures provided by the Education Department of Hong Kong (as cited in Tsui, 2004), before the handover, 94% of students were studying in English as the Medium of instruction (hereafter EMI) schools and only 6% of them were studying in Chinese as the Medium of Instruction (hereafter CMI) schools, despite the fact that Cantonese was their mother tongue. Although schools could choose MOI, the choice did not really exist as schools would not choose CMI when the British government kept its market value low (Tsui, 2007). Another example is that the first CMI university was only founded in 1964, after nearly one century of British rule. It is evident that the primary goal of British language policy was to sustain English-speaking colonial residents to serve British interests. Although there appeared to be some autonomy among schools in early 1990s when the Education Commission encouraged mother- tongue as MOI, schools showed little enthusiasm and remained EMI due to the economic value of English. Radical reshaping of language policies was only led by the return of Hong Kong in 1997. 2 b. Post Colonial Period: Biliterate Trilingual The most controversial language policy was the biliterate and trilingual language policy introduced in October 1997. The policy focused on training Hong Kong students to be biliterate in Chinese and English and trilingual in Cantonese, Putonghua, and English. Under this policy, ‘Mother tongue’ education was promoted and schools were not allowed to use EMI unless criteria set by the government were met. By 1998, only 114 out of 421 secondary schools were allowed to use EMI under the official ‘Guidance’ (Education Department, 1997). The government’s rationale was that Chinese, or Cantonese to be specific, would be pedagogically more effective for subject-area learning and for various measures of students’ cognitive and affective experience such as motivation and self-confidence. However, the public did not applaud this change in MOI at all. Many studies on community responses showed parents wanted EMI (Chan, 2002; Lai, 2005), businesses wanted EMI, principals at CMI schools feared loss of high-achieving students, and even parents who believed Chinese MOI aided children’s achievement planned to send children to EMI schools (Tsui, 2004). In responses to this public demand, the subsequent ‘Fine-Tuning’ (Education Bureau, 2009) was released as a review on the policy, and gave suggestions for long- term language policy implementation. ‘Fine-tuning’ emphasized on the enhancement of students’ English, even though the ultimate goal of the language policy is to foster biliteracy and trilingualism focusing on mother-tongue education. On the other hand, being the national language, Putonghua was gaining more attention and became a subject in schools. In the past decade, using Putonghua instead of Cantonese to teach Chinese has become a popular school language policy among schools in Hong Kong (Gao, Leung, & Trent, 2010). Years passed, the attitudes of different parties toward the biliterate and trilingual language policy remain unchanged even when there was evidence of improvement in students’ academic performance (Tsui, 2004). Obviously, pedagogical value is never 3 the first concern when it comes to the decision of MOI. Interestingly, while the public have not been favorably inclined toward the policy and demand English MOI, their attitudes towards the uses of the three languages have been ambivalent as Cantonese is actually rated the most popular language in many studies (Chan, 2002; Lai, 2005). These attitudes are closely related to the pragmatic values of the languages and the cultural identity construction of Hongkongers. ‘Imagined’ Endangerment of Cantonese due to Increase Use of Putonghua and English a. Putonghua is Only Rated for Its Economic Value The following table extracted from the 2016 Census Report (Census and Statistics Department of Hong Kong Government, 2016) shows the increase uses of English and Putonghua in current Hong Kong society between 2006 and 2016. Table 1. Proportion of Population Aged 5 and Over by Able to Speak Selected Languages/ Dialects from 2006 to 2016 The figures of usual language seem to be insignificant as the decrease in Cantonese speakers ( 90.8% to 88.9%) and increases in English (2.8% to 4.3%) and Putonghua speakers (0.9% to 1.9%) were very small. However, regarding the three languages as 4 another language, there was a small decline of total number of people speaking Cantonese (from 96.5% to 94.6%), while there are rapid growths in that of Putonghua (40.2% to 48.6%) and English(44.7% to 53.2%). Some scholars pessimistically think such a sharp increase in the uses of English and Putonghua within a decade may eventually harm the status of Cantonese (Lee & Leung, 2012). However, the effect of MOI for one particular subject may not have such profound effect, given that the medium of assessment is still Cantonese and its instrumental value remains unchanged (Gao, Leung, & Trent, 2010). As reported by Gao, Leung, & Trent (2010), Chinese teachers found using Putonghua to teach Chinese unsustainable as students use either Cantonese (CMI schools) or English (EMI schools) to learn other subjects, and Cantonese is used in public examinations. Even the government departments questioned its sustainability. After evaluating the management of language fund, the Audit Commission challenged the effectiveness of using Putonghua to teach Chinese in schools and demanded evidence from Education Bureau before making it mandatory for all elementary and high schools in the city (Audit Commission of HKSAR, 2017). Yet, merely looking at the increase in use of the languages is an effort misplaced. The perceptions of the speakers are of more importance in showing the status and roles of the language in society. By comparing the studies on the language attitudes of the first postcolonial generation (Lai, 2005) and the second (Lai, 2011), it is safe to conclude that the status of Putonghua is still very low in Hong Kong. Cantonese, the vernacular language, remained the most popular due to its instrumental value as local people use the languages in nearly all domains (Lai, 2005; Lai, 2011). Striking enough, despite the exceptional performance of China and the increase use of Putonghua, the national language is still rated the lowest by all groups of the second postcolonial generation (Lai, 2011). A more recent survey done by Hong Kong Institute of Asia-Pacific Studies at Chinese university of Hong Kong (2016) also echoes to Lai’s findings (2011) as the speakers are not attached to the language even though they use it. The majority of 5 respondents (70.8%) said they were indifferent when using Putonghua. Also, over half (55.5%) of the respondents expected that Putonghua would not substitute Cantonese to become the most common spoken language in Hong Kong even after 20 years.