Week 2

1. Components of a Language
a. Phonetics & phonology
- Sounds
- Sequence of sounds in the words
b. Morphology
- Linguistics symbols
◼ Have no direct connection between words and meanings
◼ Arbitrary in meanings
- Mental lexicon 心理詞典
◼ Sounds
◼ Lexical structure
◼ Grammar
◼ Semantic 語義 & pragmatic 語用 information of words
c. Syntax
- Verb phrase
- Noun phrase
- Prepositional phrase
2. Grammar
a. Unconscious rules we acquired as young children
b. Finite syntactic rules
c. Infinite use
d. Generative grammar
- Hierarchical (sentences are composed of phrases )
- Creativity/Productivity
◼ ability to produce and understand numerous new sentences
3. Animal communication
a. Honeybee dance
b. Humpback whales
c. Koko, the gorilla
4. Hockett's design features
a. a set of features that characterize human language and set it apart from animal communication.
- Vocal-auditory channel
◼ we use our vocal apparatus (such as the larynx, tongue, and lips) to produce sounds, and
these sounds are perceived and understood by others through their sense of hearing
- Arbitrariness
◼ no inherent connection or resemblance between the sounds or signs used in a language
and their meanings.
- Discreteness
◼ the property of language where it is composed of discrete units, such as individual sounds
(phonemes), words, and morphemes. These units can be combined and recombined to
create meaningful messages.
 - Displacement
◼ Unlike other forms of communication, which are often limited to the here and now,
human language allows us to talk about past events, future plans, abstract concepts, and
hypothetical situations.
- Creativity
◼ While there is a finite set of words, rules, and structures in a particular language, we can
combine and recombine them in new and innovative ways to express new ideas.
5. Universal Grammar (UG)
a. Principles and parameter governing language behavior
b. All languages follow
- Forming part of the innate capacity of language learners
- Children are hard-wired with UG
◼ Children acquire language as a stage in general cognitive development
6. 4 lobes of the brain
a. Lateralization of language
- The left hemisphere is dominant for language in most right-handed people
- Even in 60-70% of left handers, the left hemisphere is dominant.
◼ though many species may also show left-cerebral dominance in producing sounds (e.g.,
birds), it seems that only humans show very strong right-handedness dominance

broca’s aphasia (expressive)

Wernicke’s area ( eceptive)

◼ Sensory information is received in the contralateral

(opposite) side of the brain from the side of the body from which it is sent.
b. Modularity
- Different language skills involve different parts of the brain
c. Brain Plasticity
- during the early stage of language development (i.e., children), the right hemisphere can take
over many of the language functions normally resided in the left hemisphere.
7. Critical Period Hypothesis
a. A period early in life in which we are especially prepared to acquire a language - from birth to
middle childhood
- Children deprived of language during this critical period show atypical pattern of brain
lateralization
b. After the period, the acquisition of grammar is difficult and, for most individuals, never fully
achieved.
8. Child Language
a. Systematic
b. Errors: Overgeneralization
- Syntax error everywhere
c. First language acquisition
- Memorizing sentences? - No
- Mimicking? – No
- Explicit instruction ? - No
- Exposure to the language (s) – Yes!
◼ To 'trigger‘ the inborn ability/innate template to acquire grammar
= UG/ Language Acquisition Device (LAD)
◼ To enable an appropriate social, interactional context
- Exposure to the language (s) early – Arguably yes?!
Week 3
1. Newspeak
a. The principles of Newspeak are grounded in the Sapir–Whorf Hypothesis
b. Radically revised version of the English language from which many meanings to us are removed
c. This was done partly by the invention of new words and by stripping such words as remained of
unorthodox meanings
- Make all some modes of thought impossible
- Premise (前設): thought is dependent on words
2. Language as a symbolic system of representation
a. Langue (linguistic sign)
- Signifier: labels (sound/ letter combinations)
- Signified: concepts
◼ Relative to parole
b. Speakers of different languages engage in an arbitrary division of reality
c. The structure of language had been mapped on the structure of culture
- Language: a closed system of linguistic signs shared by all members of a community
- Culture: a closed system of relational structures shared by homogeneous social groups
◼ one language = one folk = one nation
◼ linguistic nationalism
◼ language = essence of a nation/culture
◼ linguistic purism (純粹主義)
◼ linguistic prescriptivism (語言規範主義 = the belief that one variety of a language is
superior to others and should be promoted as such)
◼ Implications on national language policy
3. The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis/ Linguistic Relativity
a. the proposal that the particular language one speaks influences the way one thinks about reality
b. Language is a guide to “social reality”
- Human beings…are very much at the mercy of the particular language (受控於某語言) which
has become the medium of expression in their society
- language habits of our community predispose (使傾向) certain choices of interpretation
c. Native American languages VS Standard Average European (SAE) languages (including English,
French, German, etc.)
- the social categories we create and how we perceive the events and actions are constrained by
the language we speak.
d. Grammar
- Background linguistic system
- The shaper of ideas
◼ Our native language dissects nature
◼ We are parties to an agreement to dissect nature in such way
◼ the agreement is codified in the patterns of our language
- Languages classify items of experience differently
 ◼ The class corresponding to 1 word and 1

thought in language A may be regarded by language B as => 2 classes corresponding to =>

2 words and thoughts

◼ English differences of time =

Hopi differences of validity
e. Criticisms

-
4. Sapir-Whorf hypothesis
a. Strong form: Linguistic Determinism (the prison house view of language)
- The language we speak determines how we perceive and think about the world
b. Weak form: Linguistic Relativism
- Language influences our thoughts about reality
- If different languages influence our minds in different ways, this is not because of what our
language allows us to think but rather because of what it habitually obliges us to think about
Different languages encode different categories and speakers of different
c. Grammatical Gender languages therefore think about the world in different ways;

d. Supporting linguistic relativity

e.
Week 4
1. Essentialism
a. Assumptions
- Groups can be clearly delimited; Groups members are more or less alike
- Individuals are formed and shaped by formations which precede them, be these biological or
social in nature
2. Identity
a. Defining how we see ourselves and our place in the world
b. an individual's self-concept (rather than of social categories)
- the value and emotional significance attached to a membership
- one’s knowledge of one’s membership of a social group(s)
c. subjective; emotional significance being an integral part
3. Post-structuralism of Identities
a. Developed through language
- One’s expertise in a language/ dialect/ sociolect serves a passport to the specific language
community
b. always socially and historically embedded
- through primary socialization
- Shaped in diverse ways in different cultural context
- Expressed verbally and nonverbally
c. Variable in salience and intensity; changing over time and social space
d. Different types

4. Speech Differences
a. Speech differences -> social status -> social identity
b. Variation (phonetic and syntactic) is an inherent characteristic of all languages at all times
- carry social meanings
- e.g. British and American Accent
c. Social and stylistic stratification by r-pronunciation
 d. Unequivocal evidence: women use fewer stigmatized and non-standard variants than do men of
the same social group in the same circumstances
e. the falsetto phonation creates an expressive meaning, and that this meaning can be
used to construct a diva persona and perhaps a gay identity

5. HK bilinguals’ informal language use

a. Code-mixing rather than code-switching
b. Motivation of code-mixing
- Euphemism 委婉: use of word ‘bra’
- Specificity: 黎明有好多 FANS
- Principle of economy: 你 CHECK IN 左未呀？
- Bilingual punning 雙語雙關語: 號外 newspaper extra
 c. Konglish

d. Ethnocentrism 民族優越主義 / Otherization(Othering) 他者化

- Ingroup-favoritism
- Stereotyping
- Bias and prejudice
- Discrimination
- Racism
6. Hybrid/Mixed Identities & Marginality

a.
- Encapsulated Marginality
◼ the experience of individuals or groups who exist on the margins of society but are able to
maintain a sense of identity and community within their own enclosed spaces or
subcultures
◼ e.g. China Town, Little Italy
- Constructive Marginality
◼ A deliberate and proactive approach taken by individuals or groups who are marginalized
within a society.
◼ Challenge stereotypes
◼ Activism
Week 7
1. Sex VS Gender
a. Sex: Male + Female
- Biological
b. Gender: Masculinity + Femininity
- Social
2. Sexuality
a. Individual’s identity in terms of sexual activities
b. Heteronormativity (異性戀本位)
3. Women’s Language
a. Developed due to their exclusive concern with the care of children, cooking, sewing, and etc
- Women speak more, leave more sentences half-finished, avoid gross expressions, have a
preference for indirect expressions
- Hedges (sort of, I think)
- Inessential intensifiers (really, so)
- Elaborate color terms (lilac rather than purple)
- Tag questions (it’s a beautiful day, isn’t it?)
b. A way of speaking that reflects and produces a subordinate position in society
- Tentative
- Powerless
- Trivial
c. Learned as part of learning to be a women
- Imposed on women by societal norms
4. Men VS Women
a. Premise: society subjects women and men to different life experiences
b. Men: employ competitive language & domination
- See language as a tool for obtaining and conveying info
c. Women: create webs of inclusion with softer language
- See language as an important means to develop personal relationships
◼ Women do more compliments and more apologies
◼ Women are NOT necessarily more polite than men (ruin a relationship is a kind of
development)
d. Biological Determinism
- women and men communicate differently, but also they “think, feel, perceive, react, respond,
love, need, and appreciate differently”
5. Evolutionary psychology
a. The primary purpose of language is to gossip
- Women were the driving force and playing a primary role in language evolution
b. Women: Gathering & children care → verbal skills
- Female brain for Empathizing
- Assisted by left hemisphere for language & communication
c. Men: Hunting → spatial skills
 - Male brain for Systemizing
- Assisted by right hemisphere for spatial skills.
d. Fetal Testosterone (FT)

- LH dominance for language seems to be stronger in men

- women appear to make more use of both hemispheres
◼ Bilateral representation for language may explain why women show better performance
in verbal skills
6. Feminist linguists: Gender is a process of social construction
7. Gender and Sexuality as Performed

a.
b. Gender Identity = effects we produce by way of particular actions we perform: speech, body
language, dress, appearance and possessions
- gender has to be constantly reaffirmed and publicly displayed by repeatedly performing such
acts,
Week 9
1. Popular culture
a. Central and pervasive in advanced capitalist systems
b. Produced by culture industries
- To generate profit
c. Serving social functions
- Most people share and know about
◼ E.g. Titanic (1997)
- Defining and disseminating 傳播 social norms
◼ [-ve] Promote commercialism, shallow effort
◼ [-ve] Damage cultural boundaries
◼ [-ve] dilute language, values and traditions
- Producing social identities
2. Globalization
a. Expansion and intensification of social relations across world-time and space
b. Shared belief
- Increasing interconnectedness is profound to cultures
c. Hyperglobalists
- No others but global us
- Universalism/ cosmopolitanism
◼ Uniform, global cultures override locality
◼ [-ve] hegemony 霸權 of the capitalist system
◼ [-ve] Domination of the rich over the poor
◼ [-ve] Homogenized world’s cultures + cultural imperialism 文化帝國主義
◼ [-ve] Modern form of colonialism
d. Sceptics
- Less global but more regional
- Globalization accentuates 使顯著 otherness of local communities
◼ Resurgence of language and cultural assertiveness led by to localizing pressures
e. Transformationalists
- heterogeneous, multidimensional and hybridized
- Interaction between local identity and global identity
◼ Opportunities to fully develop social identity as a member of a global community
◼ Extending oneself beyond the local
- Transcultural identities
3. Global Language
a. Homogeny
- Linguistic Imperialism / Linguicism
- Hidden political &ideological motivation for the wide spread of English
◼ linguistic genocide
b. Heterogeny
- English embedded in local cultures
 - English influenced by the previous linguistic habits of the local speakers
- English continues to indigenize everywhere
◼ Acquiring local characteristics
◼ Transforming itself into localized varieties to represent effectively the contextual
experiences
◼ e.g. Konglish
c. Hybridization

-
4. Translanguaging / Ownership of English

a.
b. multilingual speakers go beyond conventional divides between named languages and
between modalities 模式 to act, to know and to be (多语言使用者超越命名语言之间和
行动、认知和存在的模式之间的界限)
c. Hip-pop
- Interplay among translanguaging practice, heteroglossic creation and sense of identities
- 24 Herbs 香港樂隊
◼ Translanguaging lyrical practice: More than mixing in some English words/sentences
◼ “Togetherness in difference”: Respect diversity
◼ Creating new hybrid styles with a new attitude: a “feel” of both local and trans-local +
both Cantonese and English-speaking + both suave educated cosmopolitan middle-class,
and streetwise vulgar grassroots
Week10
1. Language Planning/ Language Management/ Language Engineering
a. Changing the linguistic behavior of a speech community
b. Influencing speakers’ choices concerning languages
c. Influencing structural features of language
- Pronunciation
- Grammar
- Vocabulary
2. Type of Language Planning
a. Type 1: Status planning
- Decisions about which languages will fill various official roles in society
◼ Working language for government
b. Type 2: Corpus planning
- Influence structural aspects
c. Type 3: Acquisition planning
- Decisions about how language varieties are to be learned and at what age
◼ Medium of instruction in schools
3. Levels of Language Planning
a. Macro: polity 政體 level
b. Micro: particular circumstances
c. Meso: small language maintenance and revival
4. Language Policy
a. A device to perpetuate 使永恆 and impose language behaviors in accordance with the national,
political, social, and economic agendas

b.
c. Ideological orientations
- One language = one folk = one nation
- Language as unifying force for statehood and national identity
 d. Utilitarian 功利主義 views of language
- Efficiency in facilitating communication
- Usefulness in achieving utilitarian goals
◼ Access to social mobility and economic prosperity
- Substantial reform or even abolishment of a language/ dialect when needed to meet better the
communicative needs
5. LLP in China
a. Chinese: a term designated for grouping of regional dialects
b. China has 9 regional dialects
c. Nearly 300 other dialects by non-Han people
d. Qin Emperor adopted xiaozhuan 小篆 as the official script
- Strengthen the newly unified nation
- Everyone reads a standardized Chinese, though s/he might speak a different dialect

e.
f. Influence from the West: a strong modern nation-state spoke one common language and the roman
alphabet triumphed there 一个强大的现代民族国家使用一种共同语言语言和罗马字母在那里
取得了胜利
g. Modern China: Nationalism
- Completely absent: language as the reassured essence of a nation and its people
- Replaced with: a fully utilitarian view
◼ Compared to the west, there has been relatively little nationalist passion in China for the
Chinese language as a possible symbol of national identity
◼ Instead, the traditional writing system of Chinese with its complicated script = the
strongest connecting bond among Chinese
-

-
- Diglossia 雙層語言 in China
◼ 語言學中指在特定社會中存在兩種緊密聯繫的語言，一種具有更高的威望，通常被
政府所使用，或在正式的文本中使用、或謂之文言或書寫體文言文；另一種威望較
低，常作為方言口頭使用、或謂之白話或書寫體白話文。
- Bi-dialectalism

◼
- Bilingualism in a minority language and Chinese
 ◼

- Linguistic pressures to minority

◼ Decline and endangerment of the minority languages
◼ Utilitarian = economics and pragmatic 語用 drives to resort Chinese
Week 11
1. Linguistic landscaping
a. Visibility of language on objects that mark the public space in a given territory
- Language of public roads signs
- Ads billboards
- Street names
- Place names
- Shop signs
- Public signs on government buildings
b. One of the main mechanisms affecting de facto language policies and practices
c. Semiotic 符號學 landscape
d. Discourses in place
2. 1st Wave of LL Studies
a. The most salient marker of perceived in-group versus out-group vitality
b. Underlying premise
- Visibility of a particular language = vitality of the language of its group of users
- A quantitative, distributive approach
◼ geographic distribution of signs through counting, categorization and comparisons
- territorial presence of linguistic signs reflect societal and official status of the language
- the relative power of certain language groups manifests itself in the presence or absence of the
respective signs in the public
c. Study by Lai

-
-
- Prominence of languages in multilingual signs

◼
◼ A system of preference among competing codes on the same signage
◼ The preferred code ‘usually put on top, on the left, or in the centre position

◼
◼ The marginalised code is on the bottom, on the right, or on the margins
 ◼
- Spatial differences

◼
- Conclusion (2012)

◼
3. Recent Direction in LL Studies
a. notion of identifying and counting the ‘languages’ of multilingual signs can be problematic
b. we should consider geosemiotics
- the social meaning of the material placement of signs and discourses
- the physical location of signage adds to the sign’s meaning & interpretation
- space is considered an active factor
- sign’s meaning, relevance, function in the local setting

-
c. linking up with cultural geography
- more particularly with urban planning policy
d. frame of discussion 1: index frame

e. frame of discussion 2: spectacle frame

- consumerist 消費主義 spectacle: commodifying transformation
- unique architectural design
- individualistic styles of signs
- semiotics of luxury
- intertextual links
- use of archaic or formal Chinese characters
◼ appeal to traditional values
 ◼
f. frame of discussion 3: Branding transformation

g. residential signage in urban areas displays the preferred ways of “reading” these texts
- organizing communities into social categories, relationships and political hierarchies
- There appears to be consistent style of signage in HK to create a senese of the dwellers’
aspirational identiy
Week 12
1. Illusion of linguistic communism
a. Creating the illusion of the existence of a common language while ignoring the socio-historical
conditions -> dominate & other language subordinates/ eliminated
2. Linguistic capital
a. Fluency in a high-status, world-wide language used by groups who possess power (social, economic,
cultural, political) in local and global society
b. Has exchange value in a market economy
3. Field
a. Social context operating as sites through which the types of capital are distributed
b. Where power interacts with capital
c. HK

-
4. Ecological Approach to LPP in HK

a. Geography:
b. Demography:

c. Government:

d. Language:
e. Linguistic hegemony 霸權
- Supremacy of English education over vernacular 本土 education
- Political and commercial interest rendered the study of Enhglish of primary importnace in all
government schools
- English eduacation of the elite
- Vernacular education left to religious and charitable organizations
- “Chinese as an Official Language Movement” (1964 –1971): Chinese made an official language in
1974
f. New Language Policy after the Handover: Biliteracy & Trilingualism
 - To culticate a sense of pride for out new identity
- Putonghua formally introduced into the school curriculum in 1998
- Symbolic changes
◼ Implementation of mandatory Mother-Tongue Education Policy

◼ Fine Tuning MOI

◼ Schools are allowed flexibility to “make professional judgment” in each of the school years
within a six-year fine-tuned MOI cycle, and to “devise school-based MOI arrangements.”
5. Biliteracy & Trilingualism
a. Standard Written Chinese: Unanimously accepted in formal writing & Spoken Cantonese
- Cantonese = the dominat vernacular
b. English scarcely used for intra-ethnic communication
c. Potonghua = a symbol of national unity
- A long term goal in the governmental discourse
d. Lack of a conducive social environment for using English & PTH in authentic communication
- A social and sociolinguistic obstacle to become biliterate in Chinese and English / trilingual in
Cantonese, English and Putonghua
e. Significant typological dissimilarity between CHIN and ENG
- English alphabet while Chinese logographic
- Salient differences from phonology 音韻 to grammar
◼ linguistic obstacle
f. Linguitic variation between Cantonese and PTH
- Dialossic gap between the vernacular and the Standard Written Chinese
- Distinctive differecens in phonology
◼ linguistic obstacle
6. Concerns from stakeholders
a. Employers
- difficulty to recruit employees with adequate language skills in both English and Putonghua
b. Parents
- concerned with diminishing opportunities to access MOI education
c. Principals of CMI schools
- negative consequence of public perception & school survival
d. Teachers of both CMI & EMI schools
- translanguaging pedagogy & the EDB guideline
e. Students of CMI & EMI
- facing challenges of different kinds
f. Employees / Ethnic Minority Groups
- Teachers also experience difficulties in helping ethnic minority students to make successful
transition
- From 1998 onwards, a good knowledge of Chinese, i.e., spoken Cantonese and written Chinese,
became a requirement for civil service jobs at all ranks