Element contents
Series: Elements in Applied Linguistics
Kongish
Translanguaging and the Commodification of an Urban Dialect
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 November 2022
Summary
This Element introduces Kongish as a translingual and multimodal urban dialect emerging in Hong Kong in recent years and still in the making. Through the lens of translanguaging and linguistic commodification, and using the popular Facebook page Kongish Daily as a case in point, the study outlines the semiotic profile of Kongish. It examines how Kongish communications draw on a full range of performative resources, thriving on social media affordances and a creative-critical ethos. The study then turns to look at how Kongish is commoditized in a marketing context in the form of playful epithets emplaced on locally designed products, demonstrating how the urban dialect is not merely a niche medium of communication on social media, but has become integral to commercial, profit-driven practices. The Element concludes by challenging the proposition that Kongish must be considered a 'variety' of English, arguing instead that it is an innominate term embodying translanguaging-in-action.
- Type
- Element
- Information
- Series: Elements in Applied LinguisticsOnline ISBN: 9781009281126Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication: 01 December 2022
References
África-Vidal, C. 2022. Translating Borrowed Tongues: The Verbal Quest of Ilan Stavans. London: Routledge.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Agha, A. 2003. The social life of cultural value. Language and Communication 23(3–4): 231–73.Google Scholar
Anderson, B. 1983. Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. London: Verso.Google Scholar
Appadurai, A. 1986. Commodities and the politics of value. In Appadurai, A. (ed.) The Social Life of Things: Commodities in Cultural Perspective. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 3–63.Google Scholar
Appadurai, A. 1990. Disjuncture and difference in the global economy. Theory, Culture & Society 7: 295–310.Google Scholar
Baker, M. 2019. Translation and Conflict: A Narrative Account (second ed.). London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Bauman, R. & Briggs, C. L.. 1990. Poetics and performance as critical perspectives on language and social life. Annual Review of Anthropology 19: 59–88Google Scholar
Becker, A. L. 1995. Beyond Translation: Essays Toward a Modern Philology. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Blommaert, J. 2008. Grassroots Literacy: Writing, Identity and Voice in Central Africa. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Blommaert, J. & Varis, P. 2015. Enoughness, Accent and Light Communities: Essays on Contemporary Identities (Tilburg Papers in Cultural Studies, No. 139), https://research.tilburguniversity.edu/en/publications/enoughness-accent-and-light-communities-essays-on-contemporary-id.Google Scholar
Bolton, K. 2002a. Introduction. In Bolton, K. (ed.) Hong Kong English: Autonomy and Creativity. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 1–25.Google Scholar
Bolton, K. 2002b. The sociolinguistics of Hong Kong English. In Bolton, K. (ed.) Hong Kong English: Autonomy and Creativity. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 29–55.Google Scholar
Bolton, K. 2011. Language policy and planning in Hong Kong: Colonial and post‑colonial perspectives. Applied Linguistics Review 2: 51–74.Google Scholar
Bolton, K., Botha, W., & Kirkpatrick, A. (eds.) 2020. The Handbook of Asian Englishes. Chichester: Wiley Blackwell.Google Scholar
Bolton, K. & Kwok, H. 1990. The dynamics of the Hong Kong accent: Social identity and sociolinguistic description. Journal of Asian Pacific Communication 1: 147–72.Google Scholar
Brown-Saracino, J. 2009. A Neighborhood That Never Changes: Gentrification, Social Preservation and the Search for Authenticity. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Butler, S. 1997. Corpus of English in Southeast Asia: Implications for a regional dictionary. In Bautista, M. L. S. (ed.) English Is an Asian Language: The Philippine Context. Manila: The Macquarie Library, 103–24.Google Scholar
Chow, R. 2012. Entanglements, or Transmedial Thinking about Capture. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Chow, R. 2014. Not Like a Native Speaker: On Languaging As a Postcolonial Experience. New York: Columbia University Press.Google Scholar
Chow, R. 2021. A Face Drawn in Sand: Humanistic Inquiry and Foucault in the Present. New York: Columbia University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Coupland, N. 2003. Sociolinguistic authenticities. Journal of Sociolinguistics 7(3): 417–31.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Coupland, N. 2012. Bilingualism on display: The framing of Welsh and English in Welsh public spaces. Language in Society 41: 1–27.Google Scholar
Cowley, S. 2021. Reading: Skilled linguistic action. Language Sciences 84 (Article 101364), https://doi.org/10.1016/j.langsci.2021.101364.Google Scholar
Cummings, P. J. & Wolf, H.-G. (eds.) 2011. A Dictionary of Hong Kong English: Words from the Fragrant Harbor. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press.Google Scholar
Deleuze, G. & Guattari, F. 1987 [1980]. A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia. Trans. B. Massumi. London: Continuum.Google Scholar
Hall, S. 1996. Introduction: Who needs ‘identity’? In Hall, S. & du Gay, P. (eds.) Questions of Cultural Identity. London: Sage, 1–12.Google Scholar
Hansen Edwards, J. G. 2015. Hong Kong English: Attitudes, identity, and use. Asian Englishes 17(3): 184–208.Google Scholar
Hansen Edwards, J. G. 2016. The politics of language and identity: Attitudes towards Hong Kong English pre and post the Umbrella Movement. Asian Englishes 18(2): 157–64.Google Scholar
Heller, M. 2010. The commodification of language. The Annual Review of Anthropology 39: 101–14.Google Scholar
Jaworski, A. & Thurlow, C. 2010. Tourism Discourse: Language and Global Mobility. London: Palgrave.Google Scholar
Johnstone, B. 2009. Pittsburghese shirts: Commodification and the enregisterment of an urban dialect. American Speech 84(2): 157–75.Google Scholar
Johnstone, B. 2010. Indexing the local. In Coupland, N. (ed.) The Handbook of Language and Globalization. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 386–405.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Johnstone, B., Andrus, J., & Danielson, A. E. 2006. Mobility, indexicality, and the enregisterment of ‘Pittsburghese’. Journal of English Linguistics 34(2): 77–104.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jones, Ellen. 2022. Literature in Motion: Translating Multilingualism Across the Americas. New York: Columbia University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kachru, B. B. 1983. Models for non-native Englishes. In Bolton, K. & Kachru, B. B. (eds.) World Englishes: Critical Concepts in Linguistics (Vol. 4). London: Routledge, 108–30.Google Scholar
Kachru, B. B. 1985. Standards, codification, and sociolinguistic realism: The English language in the Outer Circle. In Quirk, R. & Widdowson, H. G. (eds.) English in the World: Teaching and Learning the Language and Literatures. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 11–30.Google Scholar
Kachru, B. B. 1992 [1982]. Meaning in deviation. In Kachru, B. B. (ed.) The Other Tongue: English Across Cultures (second ed.). Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 301–26.Google Scholar
Kellman, S. G. 2020. Nimble Tongues: Studies in Literary Translingualism. West Lafayette, IN: Purdue University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kelly-Holmes, H. 2014. Linguistic fetish: The sociolinguistics of visual multilingualism. In Machin, D. (ed.) Visual Communication (Vol. 4 of the Handbook of Communication Science). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, 135–51.Google Scholar
Kelly-Holmes, H. 2020. The linguistic business of marketing. In Thurlow, C. (ed.) The Business of Words: Wordsmiths, Linguists, and Other Language Workers. London: Routledge, 36–50.Google Scholar
Kirkpatrick, A. (ed.) 2021. The Routledge Handbook of World Englishes (second ed.). London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Lee, T. K. 2022a. Choreographies of Multilingualism: Writing and Language Ideology in Singapore. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Lee, T. K. 2022b. Moment as method. Research Methods in Applied Linguistics 1(3). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.rmal.2022.100015.Google Scholar
Lee, T. K. & Li, W. 2020. Translanguaging and momentarity in social interaction. In de Fina, A. & Georgakopoulou, A. (eds.) The Cambridge Handbook of Discourse Studies. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 394–416.Google Scholar
Lee, T. K. & Li, W. 2021. Translanguaging and multilingual creativity with English in the Sinophone world. In Kirkpatrick, A. (ed.) The Routledge Handbook of World Englishes (second ed.). London: Routledge, 558–75.Google Scholar
Li, W. 1994. Three Generations, Two Languages, One Family: Language Choice and Language Shift in a Chinese Community in Britain. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters.Google Scholar
Li, W. 2011. Moment analysis and translanguaging space: Discursive construction of identities by multilingual Chinese youth in Britain. Journal of Pragmatics 43: 1222–35.Google Scholar
Li, W. 2016. New Chinglish and the post-multilingualism challenge: Translanguaging ELF in China. Journal of English As a Lingua Franca 5(1): 1–25.Google Scholar
Li, W. 2018a. Translanguaging as a practical theory of language. Applied Linguistics 39(1): 9–30.Google Scholar
Li, W. 2018b. Linguistic (super)diversity, post-multilingualism and translanguaging moments. In Cresse, A. & Blackledge, A. (eds.) The Routledge Handbook of Language and Superdiversity: An Interdisciplinary Perspective. London: Routledge, 16–29.Google Scholar
Li, W. 2020. Multilingual English users’ linguistic innovation. World Englishes 39: 236–48.Google Scholar
Li, W. 2022. Translanguaging as method. Research Methods in Applied Linguistics 1(3). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.rmal.2022.100026.Google Scholar
Li, W., Tsang, A., Wong, N., & Lok, P. 2020. Kongish Daily: Researching translanguaging creativity and subversiveness. International Journal of Multilingualism 17(3): 309–35.Google Scholar
Luk, J. C. M. 1998. Hong Kong students’ awareness of and reactions to accent differences. Multilingua 17: 93–106.Google Scholar
Maher, J. C. 2005. Metroethnicity, language, and the principle of Cool. International Journal of the Sociology of Language 175/176: 83–102.Google Scholar
Maher, J. C. 2010. Metroethnicities and metrolanguages. In Coupland, C. (ed.), The Handbook of Language and Globalization. Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell, 575–91.Google Scholar
Myers-Scotton, C. 1997. Duelling Languages: Grammatical Structure in Codeswitching. Oxford: Clarendon Press.Google Scholar
Nelson, G. 2006. The ICE Hong Kong Corpus: User Manual. London: University College London.Google Scholar
Ortega y Gasset, J. 1957. What people say: Language. Toward a New Linguistics. In Man and People, trans. by W. R. Trask. New York: Norton, 222–57.Google Scholar
Pennycook, A. & Otsuji, E. 2015. Metrolingualism: Language and the City. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Peterson, R. A. & Kern, R. M. 1996. Changing highbrow taste: From snob to omnivore. American Sociological Review 61(5): 900–7.Google Scholar
Pietikäinen, S., Jaffe, A., Kelly-Holmes, H., & Coupland, N. 2016. Sociolinguistics from the Periphery Small Languages in New Circumstances. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Poon, A. Y. K. 2010. Language use, and language policy and planning in Hong Kong. Current Issues in Language Planning 11(1): 1–66.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Raessens, J. 2014. The ludification of culture. In Fuchs, M., Fizek, S., Ruffino, P., and Schrape, N. (eds.) Rethinking Gamification. Lüneburg, Germany: Meson Press, 91–114.Google Scholar
Rymes, B. 2020. How We Talk About Language: Exploring Citizen Sociolinguistics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schneider, E. W. 2009. Postcolonial English: Varieties Around the World. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Schroeder, J. E. 2006. Editorial: Introduction to the special issue on aesthetics, images and vision. Marketing Theory 6(1): 5–11.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Setter, J., Wong, C. S. P., & Chan, B. H. S. 2010. Hong Kong English. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.Google Scholar
Sewell, A. & Chan, J. 2016. Hong Kong English, but not as we know it: Kongish and language in late modernity. International Journal of Applied Linguistics 27: 596–607.Google Scholar
Silverstein, M. 2003. Indexical order and the dialectics of sociolinguistic life. Language and Communication 23: 193–229.Google Scholar
Smith, J., & Osborn, M. 2008. Interpretative phenomenological analysis. In Smith, J. (ed.) Qualitative Psychology (second ed.). London: Sage, 53–80.Google Scholar
Steffensen, S. V. 2015. Distributed language and dialogism: Notes on nonlocality, sensemaking and interactivity. Language Sciences 50: 105–19.Google Scholar
Stroud, C. & Williams, Q. 2017. Multilingualism as utopia: Fashioning non-racial selves. AILA Review 30: 167–88.Google Scholar
Theng, A. & Lee, T. K. 2022. The semiotics of multilingual desire in Hong Kong and Singapore’s elite foodscape. Signs and Society 10(2): 1–29.Google Scholar
Thibault, P. J. 2011. First-order languaging dynamics and second-order language: The distributed language view. Ecological Psychology 23(3): 210–45.Google Scholar
Trudgill, P. 1972. Sex, covert prestige and linguistic change in the urban British English of Norwich. Language in Society 1(2): 179–95.Google Scholar
Wang, D. D. 2021. Introduction: Chinese literature across the borderlands. Prism 18(2): 315–20.Google Scholar
Wong, M. 2017. Hong Kong English: Exploring Lexicogrammar and Discourse from a Corpus-Linguistic Perspective. London: Palgrave Pivot.Google Scholar
Woolard, K. A. 1998. Simultaneity and bivalency as strategies in bilingualism. Journal of Linguistic Anthropology 8(1): 3–29.Google Scholar
- 8
- Cited by