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Kingsley Bolton (ed.), Hong Kong English: Autonomy and creativity. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2002. Pp. viii, 324. Pb US$27.95.

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 February 2004

James Stanlaw
James Stanlaw
Affiliation:
Anthropology, Illinois State University, Normal, IL 61790, stanlaw@ilstu.edu
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Extract

Many casual observers outside Asia believe that everyone in Hong Kong, owing to its British colonial past, speaks English as fluently as the queen (or, at least, George Bush). Others, hearing the grunts of martial artists like Jackie Chan, might think that English is truly a foreign entity to the people of Hong Kong, as unknown to them as, say, pizza or hamburgers. Both assumptions, as Kingsley Bolton shows in this fascinating new collection of essays, are quite wrong. Instead, the place of English in Hong Kong is probably unique in the world: It is neither simply a variety poorly mimicking the language of the UK, nor an imperial tongue imposed on a subservient populace. It is these dynamics of culture, identity, economics, globalization, education – and, indeed, politics – that are addressed in this stimulating book.

Type
BOOK REVIEW
Information
Language in Society , Volume 33 , Issue 1 , January 2004 , pp. 146 - 149
Copyright
© 2004 Cambridge University Press

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References

REFERENCES

Bolton, Kingsley (2003). Chinese Englishes: A sociolinguistic history. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Chang, Raymond, & Chang, Margaret (1978). Speaking of Chinese. New York: W. W. Norton.
DeFrancis, John (1984). The Chinese language: Fact and fantasy. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press.
Kachru, Braj B. (1996). English as an Asian language. In Maria Lourdes S. Bautista (ed.), English as an Asian language, 1–23. Manila: Macquarie Library.
Kachru, Braj B. (1997a). Past imperfect: The other side of English in Asia. In Larry Smith & Michael Forman (eds.), World Englishes 2000, Selected essays vol. 14, 68–89. Honolulu: University of Hawaii East-West Center.
Kachru, Braj B. (1997b). Opening borders with world Englishes: Theory in the classroom. In S. Cornwell et al. (eds.), JALT96: Crossing borders, 10–20. Tokyo: Japanese Association for Language Teachers.