Language in Hong Kong at Century's End

5. Why Two Languages Might Be Better Than One: Motivations of Language Mixing in Hong Kong

5 Why฀Two฀Languages฀Might฀Be฀Better฀Than฀One:฀ Motivations฀of฀Language฀Mixing฀in฀Hong฀Kong฀ Kang-Kwong Luke ABSTRACT฀ The mixing of English into Cantonese in Hong Kong is illustrated in relation t o 'high / an d 'low ' varietie s o f Cantones e an d th e socia l groupings of the community. Mixing is described as either expedient, that is , pragmatically motivated , o r orientational, that is , sociall y motivated. INTRODUCTION฀ Language mixing in Hong Kong typically involves the insertion of isolated English lexica l items, usually substantive s bu t no t necessaril y so , into a n essentially Cantonese syntactic frame consisting of mostly Cantonese words. Some common example s include : (1) ngo5 go3 warrant soeng6min6 go3 date hai6 Iuk6baat3 nin4 aa3 my C L warrant o n C L date is sixty-eigh t year PRT 1 The dat e o n my warrant i s (19)68/ (2) m4goil chec k check hoil gei2dim2 please chec k check depar t wha t tim e 'Can you tel l me the departure time , please?' (3) co5 va n hoei3 laal sit va n g o PR T 'Take a van to go there. ' 146฀Kang-Kwon g฀Luke฀ (4) cal l ngo5 laal call me PR T 'Give me a call.' As Hong Kong has been a meeting place of Chinese and Western culture since the middle of the nineteenth century, the adoption of English words in the speech and writing of the local population should hardly come as a surprise. Thus, for a long time, there has been interest in the study of the features of bilingualism in this part of the world. Amongst the precursors of current discussions are Hall (1944), Thompson (1967), and Cheung (1972). Hall give s an account o f Chinese Pidgin English . Thompson document s 'exotic' lexical preferences fo r English in Hong Kong. Cheung (1972), the first structuralis t gramma r of Cantonese (written in Chinese), devotes its final chapter to a discussion of loan words. The stud y o f languag e mixin g fro m a linguistic an d sociolinguisti c viewpoint is , however , a fairl y recen t phenomenon . Th e moder n sociolinguistic perspective did not begin to make its impact felt in Hon g Kong until the late 1970 s and earl y 1980s . One of the earliest systemati c studies o f code-mixing i n Hong Kong was that o f Gibbons (1979b) . In a series of papers (1979a , 1979b; 1983) he reports on his studies of 'U-gay wa ' (university students' talk) in which Cantonese-English code-mixing is a hallmark. These studies are summarized i n Gibbons (1987) , where i t is argued that code-mixing in Hong Kong has a role to play in defining social identity and maintaining group solidarity (cf. Scotton 1976,1983). Interest in code-mixing has since then continued to grow. Li (1994, this volume) are the most detailed studies to date of code-mixing using written data collected from a variety of sources. Yau (1993) studied the use of English words and terms in Chinese writing in a range of text types (for example, articles o n science , technology , an d busines s publishe d i n popula r magazines read by many in Hong Kong), and found code-mixin g to be a regular feature in many of these articles. Chan (1993a, 1993b; this volume) has studie d code-mixin g i n Hon g Kon g fro m th e poin t o f vie w o f it s morphological an d syntacti c organization . Penningto n (1994 ) present s empirical evidenc e t o sho w tha t Cantonese-Englis h code-mixin g ha s become a common means of communication amongst young people (fo r example, student s i n thei r earl y twenties) . Balla an d Penningto n (1996 ) investigated in detail patterns of bilingualism in an educational setting (a tertiary institution), where a mixed mode of instruction was found to have an importan t rol e t o play . Bacon-Shon e an d Bolto n (thi s volume ) an d Pennington and Balla (this volume) report widespread use and acceptance of code-mixing for in-group communication . My ai m i n thi s chapte r i s t o develo p a theoretica l framewor k fo r Why...