Linguistic hegemony or linguistic capital? Internationalization and English-medium instruction at the Chinese University of Hong Kong

Abstract

Being a former British colony, Hong Kong is now a Special Administrative Region of China and a bustling knowledge economy. Its manpower needs require a high level of competence in English and Chinese, the latter consisting of the regional vernacular Cantonese, and the national language Putonghua (Mandarin) on which standard written Chinese is based. Since both Chinese varieties are just as important as English in Hong Kong, the postcolonial language policy came to be known as ‘biliteracy and trilingualism’. For Cantonese-dominant students, however, neither English nor Putonghua is easy to learn. This chapter provides an interpretive review of the controversy surrounding the bilingual policy of the Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK) from 2004, a university which is bound by law to use Chinese as “the principal language of instruction” since it was founded in 1963. Our analysis will focus on the extent to which the spread of English in higher education in Hong Kong is perceived as hegemony or a form of linguistic capital. We will also briefly discuss whether English constitutes a threat to the vitality of the local and regional vernacular, Cantonese.