Visualising the changing face of Hong Kong : a turn towards multilingualism?

Abstract

Hong Kong, previously a small fishing village, has transitioned from a British colony to a Chinese Special Administrative Region. Hong Kong’s evolving history has witnessed the transformation of the place’s language ecology: from various Chinese dialects to the emergence of English, and from Cantonese/Chinese and English bilingualism to the current official policy of ‘biliteracy and trilingualism’ (Cantonese, Mandarin Chinese, English). However, for historical reasons and due to globalisation and immigration, Hong Kong is becoming increasingly multilingual. In recent decades, the face of the traditionally more homogeneous city has been transformed by the emergence of South Asian (Indian, Nepali, Pakistani and Bangladeshi) and Southeast Asian (Indonesian and Filipino) communities. Reflecting such (super)diversity on the ground, languages including Hindi, Urdu, Punjabi, Nepali, Bengali, Tagalog, Bahasa Indonesia and Thai are all commonly used, adding to Hong Kong’s linguistic ecology and urban palimpsest. Notably, officially enacted top-down multilingual signage is also becoming commonplace, forming part of the city’s multilingual repertoire. Our linguistic and semiotic landscape represents a visual record witnessing socio-political, demographic and ethnolinguistic changes. Using recent linguistic and semiotic landscape evidence, this article documents the changing face of Hong Kong, arguing that it is seeing a turn towards de facto multilingualism despite the de jure language policy emphasising Chinese (Cantonese/Mandarin) and English. The societal ramifications are also discussed in a context of change.