applied linguistics paper

LINGUISTICS AND EDUCATION 8, 49-84 (1996)

Bilingualism or Linguistic Segregation ‘? Symbolic Domination,

Resistance and Code Switching in Hong Kong Schools

ANGEL M.Y. LIN

City Universi@, Hong Kong

The historical and socioeconomic context out of which classroom code switching has arisen in Hong Kong is examined. Empirical analyses of actual instances of classroom code switching in Hong Kong secondary schools are presented, ond the social, cultural, and education01 functions of classroom code switching ore discussed. Closs- room code switching is found to be the teachers’ and students’ loco1 pragmatic response to the symbolic domination of English in Hong Kong, where many students with limited English capitol struggle to acquire an English-medium education because of its socioeconomic value. The theoretical justification and the social consequences of the linguistic streaming policy adopted by the Hong Kong government since September 1994 are also examined. The article concludes with a cost-benefit onaly- sis of the English-dominated educational system in Hong Kong.

1. INTRODUCTION: BILINGUAL INTERACTION AND THE MEDIUM OF INSTRUCTION IN HONG KONG

“What we don’t want is for young people to be taught in Chinglish rather than either English or Chinese and that’s what we are trying to avoid at the moment,” said Governor Chris Patten. (South China Morning Post, May 13, 1994. p. 3.)

The word and all the stereotyped or ritual forms of expression are programmes of perception and different, more or less ritualised strategies for the symbolic struggles of everyday life (Bourdieu, 1991, p. 106.)

The governor of Hong Kong appropriated a derogatory word in his statement to name bilingual interaction. He referred to the Cantonese-English bilingual

I thank Marilyn Martin-Jones and Monica Heller for their helpful comments and editorial augges-

tions. I also thank James Heap and Peter Grahame for their encouragement and helpful discussions of

some of the ideas in this article. The limitations of this article are. however, my own.

Correspondence and requests for reprints should be sent to Angel M.Y. Lin. Dept. of English, City University of Hong Kong, Tat Chee Avenue, Kowloon. Hong Kong.

49

so A.M.Y. I,in

illediuni OF instru~ti~~n in many Hong Kong schools today as Clltilt,~it.rlt------a word

hislorically associated with the contact variety of English spoken by Chinese

merchants to westerners in China’s coastal cities in the 19th century (termed

“Chinese Pidgin English” by linguists: see Hall, 1944). Although few specific

written records of the use of the word are available (e.g., the word is not listed in

dictionaries), members of the bilingual speech community in Hong Kong’ rc-

tnembcr the word being used in the early 1970s by some school masten or

English teachers to describe in disparaging tones spoken or written English that

shows a heavy syntactic or stylistic influenza from Chinese. For instance. a

sentence such as “He like listen music” (instead of”Hc likes listening to music”)

might be described by sonic people disparagingly as an instance of Chittglish.

However. the pe.jorative word Chinglish is today rarely heard among the English

teaching professionals in the territory, possibly dttc to the spread of the second

language acquisition concept of irtrrrlrrrt~tl~r~r (Selinker, I Y72) among Ilong Kong English teachers in recent years.

However. the Hong Kong governor was probably not alone in ~~ppropri~ttin~ a

derogatory word from the past to speak of bilingual interaction. Speaking bilin-

gually. as will be shown, is quite different from speaking a pidgin or an intcr-

language. The 1980s and 1990s witnessed the increasing visibility in Hong Kong society (e.g.. in movies. popular fiction, and r~~a~a~in~s) of 3 Cantonese--En-

glish bilingual mode of coi~~tnuni~~ttion (characteriscd by the insertion of English

lexical items in an otherwise Cantonese sentence. e.g.. Neih take gei f’o?, meaning. “You take how many subjects?“). This mode ol’ communication has

become especially visible among ~n~lish-ed~t~~tt~d Cantonese, such as ttnivcrsi~y

students and professionals (Gibbons. 1979. 1987). and has occasionally come

under attack from language purists, who also usr: words like Chinglish or jung- ying-gaapjaahp (meaning “Chincsc-English-mixin, ~1”) to apcak disparagingly of this widespread bilingual phe~ionl~n(~n in the society. Typically. they view this

pervasive aspect of bilingualism in Hong Kong society disapprovingly a\ both

evidence for. and the cause of .~rrrti/irtgt~rt/i,s~t~, or deteriorating language abilities

of young people in Hong Kong. (Set FLI‘S rcvicw of this position. 19X7, p. 37;

likewise. a review by Luke. 199Oa. See ~a~in”~ones & Romaine. 19X0. for a

critique or the notion of semilingualism).

This stance towards bilingual language practices in the society is more nor-

matively based than research-based. and conveys little more than the speaker or

writer’s i~ot-n~ative claims about what counts as standard or le~ititi~~tt~ language

USC. The work of sociolinguists in Hong Kong (Cheung. 1984: Gibbons. 1979.

1987; Luke. 19X4) has hclpcd us to build a more accurate picture of bilingualism

in Hong Kong. They have also drawn attention to the complex and subtle social

meanings that social actors are neptt iatin, o when they are inter~tctin~ bilin~u~tlly.

For instance. Luke ( 1984) noted that bilingual language use in Hong Kong is not merely a necessary way of wording new experiences (e.g., when no native

term exists for a western term). but also. more importantly. it is ;I liqtistic

Bilingualism or Linguistic Segregation? 51

TABLE 1

Bilingual Conversations Among Hong Kong Cantonese:

Code Change and Possible Social Meanings

English ‘High’ Cantonese ‘Low’ Cantonese Bilingual Code

+ Social distance + Social distance - Social distance - Social distance

+ Power - Power - Power - Power

+ English-educated - English-educated - English-educated + English-educated

+ Western - Western - Western + Western

reflection of how different social groups in the society respond to them. More

specifically, Luke showed that Hong Kong people may insert English words in an otherwise Cantonese sentence to both negotiate an informal situation and to reflect his or her reaction to westernism by virtue of his or her social group membership. For example, when a Hong Kong Cantonese chooses to use the word “billiard” instead of the existing native equivalents-the “high” Cantonese

word. “cheuk kauh” (signalling a formal, native situation) or the “low” Can- tonese word, “toi bo” (signalling an informal, native situation)-he or she is

using the bilingual code to indicate his or her English-educated, western quality while at the same time maintaining an informal, friendly atmosphere.

To refine Luke’s (1984) analysis, however, 1 find it necessary to replace his notion of “formality” with the more differentiating notions of social distance and power (c.f. Levinson, 1983). Since in the context of Hong Kong, English is typically associated with social distance and power whereas “high Cantonese” is

usually associated with social distance and to a much smaller degree power, it would be misleading to lump the two codes together and to describe them both as “formal” codes. In Table 1, I outline a tentative scheme of code-choice along with the social meanings that can be inferred from those choices in conversation among Hong Kong Cantonese.

It seems that the linguistic purist’s argument at best misrepresents and at worst totally ignores the sociolinguistic reality of Hong Kong society. This socio- linguistic reality has been aptly summarized by Cheung (1984):

While English in Hong Kong divides people into those who know the language (the middle class) and those who don‘t (the working class). Cantonese unites the general public and Mixed-Code3 the middle class. (p. 15)

However, in using the term “Chinglish” in the statement cited at the beginning of this article, the current governor of Hong Kong seemed to be not so much concerned with using words to provide an explicit, empirically checkab!e repre- sentation of the sociolinguistic reality in the territory than with using words to

52 A.M.Y. Lin

implicitly impose an official theory about bilin~ua1 interaction. Because it was used by him, the word had the effect of announcing that bilingual interaction was equivalent to speaking a pidginised variety, or not speaking any acceptable language at all, and that was in turn implied as logical grounds for the govern- ment policy of streaming students into schools of “one clear medium”; that is. either English-medium secondary schools or Chinese-medium secondary schools (Education Commission Report No. 4, 1990. p. 100).

But the crux of the matter remains concealed or misrepresented: What does bilingual inte~ction actually look like in the secondary classroom; how. and why, are teachers and students doing what they are doing, and what are the possible consequences of what they are doing (c.f. Heap, 1990)‘~ The governor in effect ducked all these questions by subtly imposing a “theory” about a particular form of educational provision that is not based on any concrete evidence. He was in effect asserting that teachers and students are speaking a “pidginised,” unac- ceptable form of language in the classroom, that this has negative consequences on young people’s language development. He also appeared to be saying that this must be stopped by streaming students into two groups: one qualified group, to be taught purely in English, the other unqualified, to be taught purely in Chinese (meaning spoken Cantonese and written standard Chinese).

It seems that there can be no real communication and debate, only polemics and propaganda, on the issues such as: What should be the medium of instruc- tion? And, who should be the one(s) to decide? It seems that those who have the power to design educational policies are unwilling to systematically examine the empirical evidence and to subject the grounds of their policies to open. critical examination.

The aim of this articlc is to systematically and empirically address the crux of the issue; that is, the unanswered questions about the medium of instruction in Hong Kong secondary schools. As someone who has gone through the educa- tional system and experienced the linguistic and socioeconomic realities in Hong Kong, 1 am keenly aware of and very concerned about the barriers that exist for some pupils in our society. I would like to see the provision of equal educational opportunities for all schoolchildren, so as to develop their potential and to ensure a better socioeconomic future for them. It is with a view to contributing to an openly, empirically checkable account of the socioeconomic, linguistic. and classroom realities in Hong Kong that this article has been written.

The following section of this article examines the historical and socio- economic conditions out of which classroom code switching has evolved in Hong Kong schools. The third section presents empirical analyses of actual instances of classroom code switching in Hong Kong secondary schools. The social. cultural. and educational functions of classroom code switching are discussed here. The fourth section focuses on the theoretical justifications and consequences of the linguistic streaming policy adopted by the government since September 1994. The last section examines the origins of the many painful dilemmas in which the

Bilingualism or Linguistic Segregation? 53

majority of students, teachers, parents. and school principals find themselves. The section concludes by assessing the cost and benefits of the current English- dominated educational system.

2. THE HISTORICAL AND SOCIOECONOMIC CONTEXT OF CODE SWITCHING IN HONG KONG SCHOOLS

Hong Kong is a British colony situated on the southern coast of China. It was ceded by China to Great Britain in 1842 as a result of China’s defeat in the Opium War.4 In the 1960s and 197Os, it changed from an agrarian fishing port to a labour-intensive industrial city. In the 1980s and 199Os, with the boom of the trade with China following “the open door” policy of China, Hong Kong has gradually changed from a light-industry based, manufacturing economy to an economy primarily based on the re-export of products processed in China and on business and financial servicing for China (Ho, 1994). Today, it is also one of the largest and busiest international financial centres in the world, attracting a large number of Chinese, Asian, and western speculators and investors.

Despite its international cosmopolitan appearance Hong Kong’s population is ethnically homogeneous. About 98% of its population is made up of ethnic Chinese, and Cantonese5 is the mother tongue of the majority. English native speakers account for no more than 2% of the entire population. However, they constitute the dominant class, at least until 1997, when the sovereignty of the colony is to be returned to China, and Hong Kong is to become a special administrative region of the country.

Although it is the mother tongue of only a minority, English is both the language of power and the language of educational and socioeconomic advance- ment; that is, a dominant symbolic resource in the linguistic market (Bourdieu, 1991) in Hong Kong.

The symbolic market is embodied and enacted in the many key situations (e.g., educational settings, job settings) in which symbolic resources (e.g., cer- tain types of linguistic skills, cultural knowledge, specialised knowledge and skills, etc.) are demanded of social actors if they want to gain access to valuable social, educational, and eventually material resources (Bourdieu, 1991). For instance, a Hong Kong student must have adequate English resources, in addition to subject matter knowledge and skills, to enter and succeed in the English- medium professional training programmes in fields such as medicine, architec- ture, legal studies, and in order to earn the qualifications to enter these high- income professions (qualifications that are, of course, accredited by the British). The symbolic market is therefore not a metaphor but one with transactions that have material, socioeconomic consequences for individuals.

But how has this situation arisen? A historical analysis will help to shed light on today’s educational dilemmas concerning the medium of instruction. In Sec- tion 2.1, I delineate the historical developments leading to the formation of a

54 A.3l.Y. Lin

universally recogniscd. unified and legitimised English-dominant symbolic mar-

ket. In Section 2.2, I examine the uneven distribution of the dominant aymbol~c resources across different social groups in Hong Kong. I then describe the prag- matic responses of different social groups to their differential position\ in the

symbolic market.

2.1 The Formation of a Universally Recognised, Unified and Legitimised Symbolic Market Dominated by English

Three major factors have contributed to the process of unifying and legitimiaing

the English-dominated symbolic market in Hong Kong. They are: the Hong Kong

government’s social selection policies. historical changes in the relationship

between Hong Kong und China, and the generation of mutually legitimising and

perpetuating educational and economic myths and facts.

2.1.1 The Hong Kong <Government’s Social Selection Policies Four maior types of government politics have shaped social hclcction processes

(or what Bourdieu & Passeron. 1977. call the social selection mechanism) in

Hong Kong. These have led to the l’ormation of the English-dominated symbolic

market

The mastery of English as a prcrcquisitc t& selection into a small elite group

of Chinese in Hong Kong has been achieved by various institutional arrangc-

mcnts and government policies. Firstly, there has been English-medium higher-

education policy in Hong Kong for many years. The Collcgc of Medicine I’or the

Chinese. which was founded in 1877. became the University of Hong Kong in

I9 I I This was the only government-recognised university until I963. and since I Y63 it has remained the most prestigious institution among all other higher- education institutions in the colony. At the same time. the University of Hong

Kong has throughout the century steadfastly upheld its policy of using English as

its medium of instruction and intends to continue this policy beyond I997. The

recently established Ilong Kong University of Science and Technology (estab-

lished in 1991) has followed the same English-medium policy. The Chinehe

University of Hong Kong. founded in 1961 in response to popular pressure t’or

the establishment of a government-recognised Chinese-medium university. has

remained the odd one out with rcspcct to its medium-ol’-instruction policy among

all government-recogniscd tertiary institutes in the colony. (See historical rcvicu

in Fu. 1975).

Secondly, there is the British-based accreditation system ol‘professional quali-

fications (e.g.. accountancy, medicine. engineering). Under this system. candi-

dates have to fulfil the requirements of British-based or British-associated

professional bodies and examination boards, all of which arc mediated through

English. Hence. thcrc is a built-in English language prerequisite i’or anyone

aspiring to become a professional in Hong Kong.

Thirdly, thcrc have been the policies upholdin, (7 English as the official, legal.

and government language. Jung-man or “Chinese language.” which in the Hong

Bilingualism or Linguistic Segregation? 55

Kong context is often taken to mean Modern Standard Chinese in its written form and Cantonese in its spoken form (see endnote 4), did not enjoy any official

status until 1974, when the government gave in to the demands of the Chinese Language Movement launched by local pressure groups. However, Chinese is still in many ways secondary to English in reality; for example, the English

version of the law is the only authoritative version. Fourthly, as a natural correlate of the official language policy, there has been

the imposition of an English-language requirement on individuals aspiring to join the civil service. Traditionally, official positions of high rank in the administra- tion have been filled by British expatriates or by the local graduates of the University of Hong Kong who are conversant with English. However, since 1974, Chinese has been an official language. The consequences of this have been the creation of more translation and interpretation posts. which require a high command of English, among other skills. The fact remains that English is the most important criterion for selection for high-ranking officials, and Chinese is seen as a an additional asset, but not an essential one.

With these institutions and policies well entrenched in the various administra- tive, educational, and professional arenas of Hong Kong, a symbolic market has been formed where English constitutes the dominant. if not exclusive. symbolic resource and the prerequisite for individuals aspiring to gain a share of the socioeconomic, material resources enjoyed by a small elite group.

2.1.2 Historical Changes in the Relationship between Hong Kong and China Although Hong Kong had become a British colony, due to its geographic prox- imity to China, Hong Kong continued to come under great cultural, economic, and political influence from China,6 especially in the first half of the 20th century. This peculiar duality of British and Chinese influence led to the forma- tion of competing symbolic markets and the development of parallel Chinese and English educational institutions in the colony.

So (1992) has documented the active role played by China in providing support of a linguistic, cultural, educational nature, as well as support in the areas of certification, material, and personnel in the establishment of as many as 49 Chinese-medium secondary schools in Hong Kong. This support was pro- vided during the period between the founding of the Chinese Nationalist govern- ment in Nanking in 1928 and its retreat to Taipei in 1949, when the Chinese Communist revolutionaries won control of mainland China. During that period, a centre-and-periphery relationship existed between China and Hong Kong. China, with its many Chinese-medium universities that were more prestigious than the English-medium University of Hong Kong and with its much more powerful economy, provided Hong Kong people with an alternative symbolic market, where Chinese rather than English was a prerequisite for gaining access to higher education, professional training, or other worthwhile careers. Meanwhile, the

56 A.M.Y. Lin

Hong Kong colonial administration largely pursued a policy of providing an English-medium education up to university level for children from well-to-do families, and a Chinese primary education for children from less well-to-do families (So, 1992). Thus. there was a bifurcation in both the symbolic market and in the local primary- and seconda~-education sector; the latter consisted of parallel English-medium schools (called Anglo-Chinese schools) and Chinese- medium schools (called Chinese middle schools).

However, history took a different turn after 1949. The newly established People’s Republic of China was embargoed by the United States in the 1950s for its involvement in the Korean War. Isolated by the western powers and later also by the Soviet Union in the 196Os, China stepped on the path of an autarkic economy, severing its dependence on foreign trade and enduring more than two decades of economic hardship (Eckstein, 1977). The result was a relatively self- isolationist and noninterfering stance adopted by China towards Hong Kong.7 With this cultural and economic separation from China, Hong Kong people no longer had an influential Chinese cultural centre or a Chinese economy to rely on as an alternative symbolic market, one that could compete with the English- dominated symbolic market in the colony.x

2.1.3 The Generation of Mutually Legitimising and Perpetuating Myths and Facts To understand the complex and subtle historical processes of legitimising English as the generally accepted “most useful and valuable language” in Hong Kong, an array of intermingled, mutually legitimising and pe~etuating myths and facts have to be discerned in a historical analysis. Such an analysis may be unsettling for those having grown up in Hong Kong” as it challenges us to re-examine many of our taken-for-granted beliefs and notions. In the following two sections, the myths and facts concerning our economy and education are delineated.

2.1.3.1 Myths and Facts about the Economy of Hong Kong. The recurrent public discourses highlighting the importance of English as a language of inter- national trade and commerce (e.g.. “Banking On”, 1988; “Good Command”, 199 1; “Lost for Words”, 1994; “New $7M Bid”, 1989) have helped to generate and perpetuate the notion that Hong Kong’s economic success has always hinged upon and will continue to largely depend on a mastery of English by its workforce.

What have often been neglected in such discourses are the historical records from which it is clear that the economic miracle achieved by Hong Kong since the late 1960s and 1970s had little to do with the English language or the English- conversant elite. From the start, Hong Kong’s industrial revolution was based on cotton textiles, woollens, synthetic fibres and made-up garments. Fleeing the civil war in China in the late 1940s. a large number of Chinese industrial entrepreneurs immigrated to Hong Kong, bringing with them the necessary capi- tal and expertise to set up manufacturing industries in the colony. The large

Bilingualism or Linguistic Segregation? 57

influx of immigrants from China during the same period provided the cheap labour needed for these labour-intensive industries. Besides, Hong Kong’s

cheap-labour and export-oriented economy met with few competitors in the international market in the 1960s and 1970s when many other developing coun- tries were pursuing an import-substitution economy (Ho, 1992). It can be seen that during that period, English was far from being an important contributing

factor to Hong Kong’s economic prosperity. Beginning from the 1980s and following China’s adoption of the “open door”

economic policy, Hong Kong’s industrialists have been shifting their manufactur- ing base to China to capitalise on its cheap labour. Hong Kong’s manufacturing employment sector has continued to diminish since the 1980s (Chau, 1994) and Hong Kong’s economy has been shifting to one based on re-export of products processed in China and business and financial servicing for China (Ho, 1994). All these indicate that Hong Kong’s economy has become increasingly dependent on China. With China rapidly industrialising and emerging as a huge potential consumer market attracting foreign business interests in the 199Os, experts pre- dict that Mandarin Chinese is likely to become Asia’s language of trade and commerce (Pease, 1994).

The notion that Hong Kong’s economic success has always hinged upon and will continue to largely depend on English is therefore ungrounded in view of Hong Kong’s economic structure in the past, at present, and especially in the foreseeable future. This is, however, not to deny that English is an important language of international trade and communication. What is shown in the preced- ing historical analysis is that if English has been important to Hong Kong’s economic success, it has only been one among many other equally or more important factors, such as the work ethic of the people, the continued develop- ment of China’s economy, the opening of China’s huge consumer market, and a mastery of the Chinese language.

However, there is the undeniable fact that most of the white-collar jobs (ranging from low-paying positions such as receptionists and clerks to high- paying positions such as accountants and managers), especially those offered by foreign companies in the colony, have always demanded a competence in En- glish. And foreign business leaders in Hong Kong have often complained in the media about the “poor English standards” of their job applicants (e.g., “Banking On”, 1988; “Questions Raised”, 1989). This fact about the job market and the many public discourses highlighting and sometimes exaggerating the role of English in Hong Kong’s economy have furnished the most frequently used argu- ment to legitimise the domination of English in education and in the society.10

What is often unnoticed is the mutually legitimising and perpetuating relation- ship that exists among the following phenomena:

1. The job market’s (especially the government’s and foreign companies’) de- mand for English;

58 A.M.Y. Lin

2. the government’s English-dominated policies regarding the language of civil

administration, the law, higher education. and the professions (see Section

2.1.1);

3. the government’s and foreign business interests’ public discourses gcnerat-

ing the taken-for-granted notion that Hong Kong’s economy hinges on En-

glish.

It can be seen that the job market’s demand for English is at least part of’ the

production of the government’s English-dominated policies. On the other hand,

foreign business interests join the government to orchestrate a powerful chorus

that both creates and legitimises the high foreign language demands imposed on a

predominantly Chinese society.

Business interests anywhere would probably always wish to have a rcady-

made workforce fluent in their language in another country where they find it

profitable to invest, but that does not mean that their language must become the

dominant language of education and administration in that country before they

will consider investing in it, nor can their wish justify and Icgitimisc such

domination practices. This is not to say that Hong Kong people should not

improve their English skills; what must be pointed out, however, is the fact that

foreign business interests’ demands have been used to legitimise the current

Hong Kong practices of .suhordir~ating ~111 rhcutiord gords to the rlominmt got11 of’ mastrrin,y (I ,fijreigtz Irrtz~uqy. This arbitrary and unhealthy one-sidedness

of’ educational policies and practices is concealed or justified in an array of

intermingled economic half-truths, government policies, and foreign business

interests’ demands. which continue to mutually perpetuate and legitimate one

another.

2.1.3.2 Myths and Facts about English-Medium Education in Hong Kong. The argument that has frequently been used to legitimise using English as the medium of instruction in almost all higher-education institutions in Hong

Kong is that English is the language of science. technology, and international

scholarship. Again the threat has frequently been made that Hong Kong’s aca-

demic, scientific, and technological standards will decline if the universities

change their medium of instruction to Chinese.

This argument has a particularly strong legitimising force when it comes from

internationally prestigious academics in the colony’s universities. The inherent

absurdity of the argument, however, is often unnoticed: The argument implies

that the many prestigious universities in China (e.g., Beijing University). Japan

(c.g., Tokyo University), Taiwan (e.g., National University of Taiwan). and all

other non-English-speaking countries are substandard internationally.

To point out the absurdity of’such an argument is not to deny that English is an

important language of international academic and scientific scholarship. The

writing of this article in English testifies to the currency of English in the

Bilingualism or Linguistic Segregation? 59

international scholastic world. What is argued is that high scholastic standards will in fact be more likely to be attained in Hong Kong as a result of using

Chinese, a language much more familiar to the majority of students than English (see endnote 4), as the medium of instruction in higher education. The grounds for this argument are as follows:

1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

6.

7.

High academic standards are likely to be achieved when teachers and stu- dents can engage in active and creative intellectual discussions and interac- tions. This is possible only when teachers and students can communicate fluently in both the oral and written forms of the academic language. High academic standards are likely to be achieved in the territory when international scholarship has gradually become indigenised and linguistic- ally available to an increasing number of people in the territory. In the process of indigenisation, knowledge development is advanced through the cross-fertilisation of externally appropriated knowledge and indigenous con- tributions and innovations. High academic standards are likely to be achieved when higher learning is accessible to a relatively large proportion of secondary-school graduates, because only then will the multifarious intellectual talents and potential of a large base of human resources be provided with the opportunity and environ- ment to develop and contribute to the advancement of higher levels of knowledge and expertise. By having English, a foreign language to the majority of people in Hong Kong, as the medium of instruction of almost all higher-educational institu- tions in the territory, the situation described in “1.” can happen only if almost all higher learning is to be limited to English-conversant students and staff positions be open to English-conversant academics only. If we accept the situation described in “4.“, little linguistic and cultural indigenisation of international academic knowledge will take place and only a small group of students will have access to higher education; that is, conditions “2 .” and “3 .” that are favourable to the advancement of academic standards will be removed. Conditions “2.” and “3.” will be achieved only if the majority of Hong Kong students have a high foreign language learning aptitude and their family, social, or school environments offer them ample English oral and literacy resources to support their language learning. Otherwise, their language abil- ities will be predominantly restricted to classroom English. The conditions described in “6.” have always been absent in Hong Kong (see Section 2.2), and so the argument that high academic standards hinge on maintaining a predominantly English-medium higher education is a falla- cy in the context of Hong Kong. Its often uncritical acceptance by the public is due to the myth-manufacturing public discourses of the government and prestigious academics, who appeal to the importance of English as an impor-

60 A.M.Y. Lin

tant language of international scholarship to furnish attractive (but on close inspection. inadequate) grounds for their argument.

It seems that the use of a foreign language for higher learning usually only serves to guarantee that valuable foreign knowledge and expertise remain unin- digenised and beyond the reach of the majority of students and people in the society. However, the brain-drain problem’ I and the prospering economy in I-long Kong have pointed to the need for an expansion of tertiary education since the late 1980s. With this expansion have also come the tertiary institutes’ increas- ing con~plaints about the “falling English standards” of both their students and teachers. Code switching in the lecture halls and tutorial rooms of many of the institutes has become an open secret. However, the English-medium policy does not officially allow code switching. and all written work must be done in En- glish. Many students have to resort to rote learning and copying from text-books to cope with the English medium of learning. It is clear that creative higher learning cannot take place under such c~)nd~ti~~ns, and the consequence of the English-medium policy contradicts its own alleged aim of achieving high inter- national academic standards. which has been used to justify such a policy in the

first place. A situation similar to that of the tertiary institutes has been observed both

much earlier and on a much larger scale in the majority of allegedly English- medium secondary schools. To understand the origins of this paradoxical aitun-

tion. a number of historical factors have to be considered:

After 1949, there no longer existed an alternative Chinese symbolic market to compete with the English symbolic market in the colony, and Chinese medium schools also lost their cultural and economic support from China (see Section 2. I .2); the Hong Kong ~~~vernment sL]b~~rd~nated the educat~~~nal goals of personal and cultural development to the practice of examination-oriented schooling, whose function is primarily workforce training and credentialling for the

economy: the relative isolation of Hong Kong people from their ethnic. linguistic. and cultural origins in China after 1949 (see Section 2.1.2) led to their increasing willingness to accept the subordination of educational and cultural priorities to economic priorities.

The net effect of all these historical factors seems to have been the total SubordiIlati~~n of education to comlnercialis~n. With the symbolic market being increasingly dominated by English after 1949, parents had little choice but to send their children to Anglo-Chinese secondary schools for the access they afforded to English. The pl-opo~ion of Chinese middle schools contin~led to diminish, from 45%: in 1958, to merely 8% in 1988 (So. 1992).

Bilingualism or Linguistic Segregation? 61

The expansion of secondary education since the late 1970s has meant that an increasing number of those leaving limited-English-speaking primary schools have been entering English-medium Anglo-Chinese secondary schools. Apart from a very small number of exclusive English-medium primary schools. the majority of primary schools in Hong Kong are Chinese-medium. This means that there is a radical break in the medium of instruction for the majority of primary- school graduates entering Anglo-Chinese secondary schools. Widespread class- room code switching has arisen as a local, pragmatic way of coping with this

predicament. On the other hand, the Mother-Tongue-Education Movement has not been

able to succeed in Hong Kong. While local educationists have continued to point out the rote-learning syndrome arising from the use of an unfamiliar foreign language as the medium of instruction, the Hong Kong government has always appealed to parents’ preference for English-medium schools as further evidence for the importance aand value of English in education and in the society. This is used to further legitimise its English-medium higher-education policy, which together with its other English-dominated policies (see Section 2.1.1) con- strained parents’ choices in the first place.

The majority of teachers and students in Hong Kong are thus placed in a dilemma that has arisen from the need to secure an English-medium education for students who are speakers of limited English. This dilemma is most acute at the secondary level but is also present to an increasing extent at the tertiary level in the 1990s. The key to understanding the origins of this dilemma lies in understanding the coupled phenomena of the formation of a universally recog- nised, legitimised, and unified symbolic market on the one hand (described in Section 2. l), and the perpetuation of limited access to the dominant symbolic resources for the majority of people on the other. It is to the latter phenomenon that I shall turn my attention in the next section.

2.2 The Uneven Distribution of Symbolic Capital across Different Social Groups

Luke and Richards (1982) used the term societal bilingualism to describe the Hong Kong sociolinguistic situation, in which two largely monolingual commu- nities coexist without interacting with each other. These two communities are not only linguistically, but also culturally, socially, and economically distanced. This has led to the need for a class of bilingual “linguistic middlemen” (Luke & Richards, 1982) who mediate between the English-speaking ruling class and the Cantonese-speaking majority. This elite bilingual class enjoys social and eco- nomic benefits second only to the small, English-speaking ruling class. Apart from mediating between the ruling class and the masses of the population, this elite class also serves as a model for the growing aspirations of the majority. There is a widespread belief-“the Hong Kong dream”-that anyone can enter this elite class; the only condition is that he or she has to attain a good mastery of

62 A.M.Y. Lin

the English language. the most highly valued resource in the symbolic market (see Section 2. I).

However, for the majority of Hong Kong people, the “dream” remains a dream because they and their children hardly have access to the necessary sym- bolic capital to attain a mastery of English. The recent focus on the importance of the social context of learning has led many second- and foreign-language learn- ing researchers to conclude that language learning results only from participation in authentic communicative events (Savignon. 1991). Sociocultural theories in education also point to the importance of the availability of opportunities for learners to participate in “communities of practice” in order to learn particular practices (Lave & Wenger, 1991; Mall, 1990). These opportunities are. however. socio-politically structured (Peirce. 1993: 1995). Unlike the English-speaking child or the bilingual elite’s child, who lives in a lifeworld where English is readily used in the family and community. (e.g.. the parents speak English. or watch English television. read English magazines and newspapers, etc.). the majority of Chinese children in Hong Kong live in a lifeworld where it is impossible and unnatural to use English: Their parents cannot speak English, understand English television, or read English newspapers and magazines (Lin, 1996; Yu & Atkinson, 1988). It would take an extraordinary amount of personal and family sacrifice for someone from this background to ever attain a mastery ot English. 11

What are the origins of the elite bilingual class in Hong Kong? High-quality English-medium secondary and tertiary education has always been accessible to the wealthy (see Section 2.1.2) and to a very small number of high-achieving students who get through via the public examinations. Typically, the wealthy children enter exclusive English-medium kindergartens and primary schools. which are feeder schools for a small number of prestigious high-quality English- medium secondary schools in the colony. These secondary schools also admit a small proportion of their students from those with high scores in public examina- tions. Their graduates make up Hong Kong’s bilingual elite.

With the expansion of secondary education in the late 1970s. a large number of non-wealthy and non-elite students entered secondary schools, and their par- ents all demanded English-medium education for their children because of the socioeconomic value of English in the society (see Section 2.1). Although the small number of prestigious English-medium schools continue to recruit wealthy students and high-scoring students’3 through the feeder-school system and the public-examination system respectively, the majority of nonprestigious English- medium schools get limited-English-speaking students from the majority of the population. Both the students and teaching staff in many of the latter lack the English resources to learn and teach effectively in English; the only feasible strategy they can adopt in such a dilemma is teaching and memorising English model answers for the examinations. Even in the English language lessons appar- ently devoted to improving students’ English proficiency. classroom practices

Bilingualism or Linguistic Segregation? 63

reflect both the teachers’14 and the students’ lack of English symbolic capital, and the valuable English resources remain beyond their reach despite their pain- ful efforts in both teaching and learning (Lin, 1996). Contrary to some people’s claims (Goldstein & Liu, 1994, p. 706), most schools consider English to be an important subject and assign the largest proportion of school time to English. is Students are also keenly aware of the importance and value of English for future studies and jobs. They, however, often find English difficult to learn, uninterest- ing, and irrelevant to their daily life (Lin, 1996). They find themselves forced to learn English and have mixed feelings towards English (Pierson, Fu, & Lee, 1980; Pierson, 1987; Lin, 1996). They live in a lifeworld where few have ade- quate linguistic resources to use English at all, and even if they had, they would find it unnatural and pompous to use English (Wong, 1984, quoted in Fu, 1987; Lin, 1996). They are thus placed in a frustrating dilemma where they universally recognise the importance of English for their future but at the same time have little access to the symbolic capital necessary for successfully acquiring it. It is out of this paradoxical context that widespread code switching in allegedly English-medium schools has arisen, and it is only in this context that classroom code switching can be appropriately understood. In the next section, we shall examine different kinds of attempts to understand classroom code switching in Hong Kong.

3. TAKING A CLOSE LOOK AT CODE SWITCHING IN HONG KONG SCHOOLS

Many studies of classroom code switching among teachers and students who

share the same native language in Hong Kong have not described how and when code switching actually takes place. They have largely assumed that code switch- ing is a more or less homogeneous and objectifiable phenomenon, and they have proceeded to correlate code switching with other performance variables or theo- retically constructed learning variables (e.g., Biggs, 1990, 199 1; Johnson, Chan, Lee, & Ho, 1985). No attention was given to why, when, and how teachers and students coproduce the rather diverse phenomena that all come to be known as classroom code switching.

There have so far been two studies that analysed actual instances of classroom code switching: one carried out by Johnson (1983, 1985), which focused on teaching and learning in different areas of the curriculum; the other was a study I carried out in the early 1990s in English language lessons (Lin, 1990).

Johnson (1983, 1985) fully transcribed five content lessons (geography, histo- ry, math, science, social studies) from five different Anglo-Chinese secondary schools. He then analysed switched utterances in their discourse context. He identified four main factors associated with code choice. English was found to be associated with discursive practices that were text-dependent, formal, didactic, and memory-based; Cantonese, however, was found to be associated with prac-

64 A.M.Y. Lin

tices that were text-independent, informal, explanatory. and understanding- based. Although this is an important finding, a lot remains unexplained by this classification. I will reexamine some of Johnson’s data samples ( 1985) and try to refine and deepen his analysis to gain a closer picture of code switching in content lessons.

ICwvyt I : This is Johnson’s (19851 Example 4 (p. 48). The data presentation format is as

in Johnson’s original research report: Tape-recorder counter numbers precede utterances; English translations are put in brackets below the Cantonese ut- terances (The Yale transcription system is employed for the Cantoncsc dis- course).

A math teacher is moving round the class checking work and he finds that two pupits have not done their homework:

024 How about you’! 025 Oh. neih meih jouh hou hah? Chahn Gwai-hou. Laahndi-wo. Neih ne? Neih

leuhng go jouh matyeh? Hah? Mhgeidak-jo dou yauh ge me! Hah? Gung fo dou yauh mh geidak jouh ge me? Hah? Neih leuhng go jouh matyeh? (Oh’? Yowl haven’t done it ch Chahn Gwai-hou. So lazy. And you? You two why?

What? Forgotten? How cm that bc? Eh? Is there such a thing as forgetting to do homework? What’? You two. what do you think you’re doing‘!)

Johnson (19X5) mentions that English is used typically for formal statements and instructions that are directed to the whole class and which relate directly to the conduct of teaching and learning. whereas the use of Cantonese normally retlects a departure from this situation such as in addressing individual students. However. he also notes that this general tendency notwithstanding, English may also be used relatively informally with the whole class; for example, a teacher

says to the whole class. *‘Keep up your work, ” or with individual students, as in Excerpt 1. But Johnson points out that the “tongue-lashing” given to the two students in this example is handed out in Cantonese, and it is doubtful whether English would be used in the same way (pp. 47-48).

If English can be used both “formally” and .*informally,” with the whole class and with individual students. but something like “tongue-lashing” is done only in Cantonese, then Johnson’s “formal/informal” classification does not seem to be a very useful description of the possible social meanings that arc being implicitly communicated when a teacher code switches. Further analysis is needed.

To analyse any social interaction or action. social scientists draw on their

linguistic and cultural knowledge as members of the same cultural-linguistic group as the social actors whose interaction or actions they are studying (Gar- fink&. 1967; Winch, 1958). The social scientist is thus a melnber-analyst draw- ing on the same interpretive resources which the social interactants thcmscivcs depend on to make sense of social and cultural phenomena (Heap, 1976). TO unclerstantl the interaction in Excerpt I. the analyst needs an intimate knowledge

Bilingualism or Linguistic Segregation? 65

of the implicit meanings that can be signalled by the use of the different codes among Cantonese people in Hong Kong. For instance, a Hong Kong Cantonese

does not normally speak to another Hong Kong Cantonese in English; if he or she does, he or she will be interpreted as signalling social distance, power, and, in short, “baahn yeh” (meaning: “acting, ” “putting on airs”) (see also Table 1 in Section 1). These interpretations may be waived only in special institutional situations where institutional constraints apply; for example, in the legal court or in the classroom, where Cantonese social actors typically suspend their ordinary roles and (or) take on (additional) institutionally defined English-speaking roles.

When we examine Excerpt I again, we notice that the teacher is speaking English to the student (“How about you?“) when he is about to check his work. He then gives out an exclamation (“Oh”),16 apparently upon noticing that the student, Chahn Gwai-Hou, has not done his homework. This is followed by a “tongue-lashing” done entirely in Cantonese. So, it is the discovery of a student’s not having done his homework that triggers the teacher’s switch from English to

Cantonese. As suprasegmental features such as changes in pitch and loudness have not been recorded in the transcription provided by Johnson, we have few clues to the teacher’s probable emotional change that coincides with his code switch. But his exclamation, “Oh”, indicates his surprise, and one that is very probably unpleasant in this situation.

It seems that when the teacher switches from English to Cantonese, he is contextualising a shift in frame (Goffman, 1974): He is signalling a suspension of both the definition of the situation as an English-medium math lesson and his institutional role as an English-speaking math-cum-English teacher whose im- plicit concerns include the teaching and learning of not only mathematical knowledge and skills, but also academic English for math and ordinary conversa- tional English. That explains why English is used even when the topic is not related to academic math; for example, when he is about to check the student’s homework, he speaks to him in conversational English, “How about you?”

However, by switching from English to Cantonese, he is highlighting to his students a different set of concerns that he now demands them to pay attention to: the extremely unacceptable behaviour of the two students, who have not fulfilled their responsibilities and obligations as students.

It seems that the teacher is appealing to implicit native cultural norms and values to admonish the students for not having done their homework. What is being both appealed to and reaffirmed is the cultural logic that when students have not done their homework, it is culturally appropriate for the teacher to call them lazy, and in our culture students cannot absolve themselves of their respon- sibility by saying that they have forgotten to do their homework. The force of the teacher’s admonition lies in its appeal to the cultural logic of what a teacher is entitled to say in a certain type of situation in the culture shared by the teacher and students (c.f. Heap, 1986). It is both typical of and culturally acceptable for Cantonese teachers to say harshly and ironically things like Gung fo dou yauh

66 A.M.Y. Lin

mh geidak jouh ge me ?! (meaning: “Is there such a thing as forgetting to do homework’?!“) in such situations. It is likely that the admonition would not have the same force if it were done in English rather than Cantonese, the native language of both the teacher and the students. By switching to their shared native tongue, the teacher in Excerpt I is doing a number of things: He is suspending the English pedagogic frame. highlighting a shift of concerns, and starting to talk to the students as “cultural member to cultural member.” invoking and reaffirm- ing native cultural norms and values. What is happening here is therefore both a forceful admonition of unacceptable student behaviour and attitudes and the reaffirmation and reproduction of the native cultural norms and values regarding the responsibilities and obligations inherent in the role of a student. These cannot have been accomplished without the code switch to Cantonese.

Switches to Cantonese do not necessarily always involve an appeal to or reaffirmation of indigenous cultural values: sometimes, they are used mainly for their effect in highlighting frame-shifts and changes in the teacher’s concerns. Excerpt 2 is an example. The teacher begins his lesson in English and then breaks off and switches to Cantonese to deal with latecomers; once they have settled in, he switches back to English to continue with the lesson work (Example I in Johnson, 198.5. p. 47):

Excerpt 2: 008 Close all your text book and class work book. 0 I2 Yauh di tuhnghohk meih faan laih. Faaidi!

(Thcrc are some classmates not back yet. Be quick!) 017 Now. any problem about the classwork’!

Johnson (1985) analyses the Cantonese utterance as an example of an informal aside done in Cantonese. Although agreeing partially with this analysis, I would, however. note that if it is to mark out a mere topical digression, the teacher could well have done this by means other than code switching; for example, intonation- al changes, hand-claps. or pauses to bracket the aside (see examples of these in Lin, 1990, pp. 32-36). The use of these contextualisation cues (Gumperz, 1984) does not involve a violation of the institutional “use-English-only” constraint which teachers in Anglo-Chinese secondary schools are well aware of. I there- fore argue that what is being signalled here is not only a topical aside but also a radical break in the English pedagogic frame and an urgent change in the teach- er’s concerns. By the switch from English to Cantonese the teacher seems to be relaying to his students this implicit message, “Now I’m so annoyed by these latecomers that 1 have to put aside ull kinds of teaching, including that of English teaching, and concentrate on one single task: that of getting you to settle down quickly! And you’d better take my command seriously as I’m single-minded in enforcing it!” This break in the English pedagogic frame to highlight a different. urgent set of concerns cannot have been achieved without the teacher’s switch from English to Cantonese.

Bilingualism or Linguistic Segregation? 67

The key, therefore, to understanding the implicit meanings signalled by code switches lies in a recognition of the sociolinguistic fact that whenever Hong Kong Cantonese have something urgent and earnest to relay to one another, they do so in their shared native language; whenever Hong Kong Cantonese speak to one another in English, despite their having a common native language, it is usually because of some institutionally given reasons, such as, to teach and learn the English language. When teachers want to establish a less distanced and noninstitutionally defined relationship with their students, they will also find it necessary to switch to their shared native language, Cantonese, as in Excerpt 3. This time the teacher is commending the students’ work. Johnson (1985) men- tions that throughout the first part of this lesson the teacher is returning and commenting favourably in Cantonese upon the students’ science projects, and the following excerpt begins with a transcription of the last part of this section (Example 5, 1985, pp. 48-49):

Excerpt 3: 094 Jauh chin keih mh hou jeung keuih yat tek jouh tek jouh lohk go jih ji lo douh,

saai jo di sam gei (but don’t kick it into the waste paper basket, a waste of your effort.)

095 waahkje neih ho yih jeung tiuh sin cheun hei keuih diu hai neih go fong douh; hou leng ge. Mh hou saai jo keuih; ho yih jih gei lo faan laak. (or you can put a thread through it and hang it up in your room; very beautiful. Don’t waste it; you can get it back yourself.)

096 Now you take out your note book. we come back to Mathematics. Turn to Exercise Eleven C. We look at the problems.

Johnson (1985) pointed out that the transition to the main business of the les- son is marked by the switch to English, which then predominates throughout the remainder of the lesson. He describes this lesson as “an extended example of the informal/formal continuum between Cantonese and English.” We however find that the terms “formal” and “informal” do not provide the best description of what is happening. English is a language of power and social distance in the wider society, and any Cantonese person, no matter how fluent in English, has to switch to Cantonese if he or she is serious about establishing a genuine and friendly relationship with another Cantonese person in Hong Kong (see Table 1 in Section 1). The teacher could have done his praising of the students’ work in English, but the effect would have been different. He would still be seen by the students as distancing himself from them even when praising them if the praise were done in English; the students would still be seeing him as a Cantonese hiding behind the mask of an English-speaking teacher who remained socially distanced from them. A teacher, therefore, has to switch to Cantonese to talk to his or her students if he or she wants to establish a warm and friendly atmo- sphere. On the other hand, he or she can always switch back to English to resume a more distanced stance, for instance, to facilitate a pedagogic task at hand. In

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other words, code switching adds to the teacher’s repertoire of communicative resources in the classroom. With the creative use of these communicative re- sources, the teacher can effectively negotiate for different role relationships with the students; for example, a teacher, a friend, a discipline enforcer, a cultural advisor, etc., whenever the need arises (for further examples of these, see Lin. 1990).

Code switching can also serve the function of establishing bilingual academic knowledge, as in Excerpt 4 below, where a science teacher is teaching about a chemical solution (Example 2 in Johnson, 1985, pp. 47-48):

Excerpt 4: 017 Do you still remember this’? This solution is called potassium permanganate solu-

tion. 0 19 fui-mang-yeuhng ge yuhng-yihk laak

(potassium permanganate solution that is) batgwo ngohdeih mh haih hou seuiyiu ne gei nidi meng. (but we don’t need to remember these names)

022 So, question A. what has happened to the colour when you add in water?

Johnson ( 198.5) analysed the Cantonese utterances as a “direct translation” and an “informal aside,” which is yet “related to the teaching and learning situation.” The most interesting thing about this example has, however, not been brought out in his analysis.

The teacher’s apposition of the English chemical term, “potassium permanga- nate solution,” with its Chinese equivalent is interesting. The word “Chinese” is

used here because although the teacher said the chemical term in Cantonese, its origins are in the modern Chinese scientific literature, where western knowledge has been translated and indigenised. This indigenisation process of western mod- ern science started as early as China came into contact with western knowledge directly or indirectly through Japan’s translations in the 19th century. Today, all branches of western modern knowledge have been fully indigenised and well established with standardised Chinese terminology in China and Taiwan.

This teacher is untypical in his bilingual familiarity with chemical terms. Most Hong Kong teachers have been trained in the colony’s English-medium schools and higher-education institutes. They are unfamiliar with the Chinese counterparts of most English scientific terms and have difficulties using Chinese scientific texts (Tung, 1990). This teacher. however, knows both terms for the chemical solution in focus and smoothly introduces them side by side, with the English term immediately followed by its Chinese counterpart. The effect of this apposition of English and Chinese scientific terms by the teacher is that the students can know that there exists a corresponding body of scientific knowledge in Chinese, that chemistry exists in both languages, that their teacher is familiar with both systems, and that they may be expected to know both as well.

Bilingualism or Linguistic Segregation? 69

However, immediately after the teacher has introduced the equivalent Chinese

term, he says, “batgwo ngohdeih mh haih hou seuiyiu ne gei nidi meng” (meaning: “but we don’t much need to remember these names”). Then he switches back to English to ask a question about the properties of the chemical solution. It is as if he has to hurry to make a clarification about the status of the Chinese knowledge that he has just shown himself to be well-versed in. He is in effect telling his students that they will not be held accountable for having learnt any of these Chinese terms though he may introduce them all the same. In other words, he seems to be conveying to his students the message that this extra Chinese knowledge may be good to have but is not required for the examination. This is also evidenced by his not writing out the Chinese term for his students. In Hong Kong, teachers typically inform their students about which topics of all those covered in class will be required in the examination and which are only supplementary or interesting topics to know about but do not count as “knowl-

edge-required-for-examination.” The switch from English to Cantonese serves

first to introduce corresponding Chinese knowledge and then to clarify about the status of the Chinese knowledge just introduced. It reflects both the teacher’s resistance to and compromise with the monolingual English objectives of the curriculum. The result of this teacher’s resistance and compromise is what I call “English-dominant academic bilingualism.” In Excerpt 5 (Example 14 in John- son, 1985, p. 56) a geography teacher uses a similar “English Key Tern- Chinese Key Term” discourse format (Heap, 1988) to establish bilingual knowl- edge of a geographic term, but without downgrading the value of the Chinese part of the pair:

Excerpt 5: 045 So that means breaking up the land and then carrying away the small pieces of sand

into the sea; then we call it erosion 047 cham sihk jok yuhng

(erosion)

047 OK Now besides a cliff. .

The apposition of the English and Chinese academic terms has the effect of

establishing academic bilingualism. Moreover, there are cognitive advantages in introducing the Chinese equivalents of English terms as well. For instance, the

Chinese term, cham sihk jok yuhng, is rather transparent in its meaning; it is made up of words that mean “invade-erode-effect.” As Johnson (1985) remarked

(p. 56), the term is not in common Cantonese usage; however, he failed to recognise that the components that make up the term are common Cantonese words and a Cantonese speaker can easily infer from them the meaning of the specialised term. In fact, this is a characteristic of many Chinese counterparts of English specialised terms. By knowing both the English and Chinese terms, students can not only understand scientific texts in both languages but also form richer multiple conceptual connections (Gagni, 1993), which facilitate their un-

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derstanding and learning of the underlying scientific concepts. However, the teacher does not write out the Chinese term for the students, probably reflecting a compromise with the “use-English-only” institutional constraint. Another inter- esting regularity I have noticed in Johnson’s classroom data is that even when the teacher introduces both English and Chinese terms side by side, they invariably do so in the English-Chinese sequence, reflecting the subsidiary status of Chi- nese to English. Besides, English is the medium of all texts and written work in school. Therefore. despite the teacher’s efforts to introduce English terms along with their Chinese counterparts, the effect is still one of English-dominant aca- demic bilingualism.

What is much more frequently reflected in the classroom data, however. is what I call “Cantonese-annotated English academic monolingualism;” that is, the main purpose of using Cantonese (Ll) is not to establish bilingual knowledge of academic terms but to expediently annotate English (L2) key terms, key state- ments, or texts to students who have limited English linguistic resources. In Excerpt 6 (Example 23 in Johnson, 1985, p. 60), Cantonese is used to annotate an English key term, climate, and its underlying concept:

Excerpt 6: 546 Climate jauh haih gong keuih chyuhn nihn pihng-gwan ge tin hei dim yeung

yeung. (Climate is [to say] the average weather condition during the whole year.)

547 haih gong pihng-gwan ge, all right? (it’s talking about the average. all right?)

548 Jik haih gong muih-yat-nihn la, gam jik haih wah . . . (That is, during a year; so. in other words .)

S4Y difference between weather and climate is the weather is telling us the daily changes. all right? The daily changes. But climate is the average weather condition during a year. All right?

After explaining the concept of climate in Cantonese, the teacher switches back to English to state the difference between the concepts of “weather” and

“climate,” using a definition of climate that has been annotated in Cantonese in the immediately preceding utterances. What is to count as the official, legitimate

knowledge corpus established in the lesson (Heap, 1985) seems to be the con-

cluding English part. The preceding Cantonese utterances are merely expedient annotations of what is to be taught and learnt: the English knowledge statements about the concepts underlying the English academic terms. In other words. the concern is to establish English academic knowledge with expedient Cantonese

annotations. This is reflected in the use of the key-term (KT) annotation dis-

course format: “L2 KT-Ll Annotation;” for example, “Climate jauh haih gong

” (meaning: “Climate is [to say] .“). Another typical annotation discourse format that I have identified in Johnson’s

data has the following structure: L2 Topic-L1 Annotation. It is exemplified in

Bilingualism or Linguistic Segregation? 71

Excerpt 7 (Example 9 in Johnson, 1985, p. 52), where the same geography teacher (as in Excerpts 5 and 6) uses Cantonese to annotate English knowledge to her students:

Excerpt 7: 056 The sea is here, all right. This is the sea the sea. 058 Now, can you see this is a big piece of land 059 Yat louh gam san seuhng heui la, hah, hou chih Gauluhng Bundou gamyeung.

(It extends right across. like the Kowloon Peninsula) 060 OK, a big piece of land with a part of it going into the sea. Haih maih yauh yat

bouhfahn san jo cheutheui hoi gam ga? (Is there a part of it going into the sea‘?)

The teacher introduces the topic in English (056-058), and then switches to Cantonese (059) to provide an annotation of the preceding English topic; then she switches back to English (060) to introduce a little more about the topic, and then again immediately switches to Cantonese (060), translating and reformulating the preceding English statement, “a big piece of land with a part of it going into the sea, ” into a Cantonese rhetorical question, “Haih maih yauh yat bouhfahn san jo cheutheui hoi gam ga?” (meaning: “Is there a part of it going into the sea‘?“). The “L2 Topic-L1 Annotation” discourse format is used twice in a chain in this example: the first time, to provide an illustrative elaboration in Ll for the immediately preceding L2 topic; the second time, to both translate and draw students’ attention to the fact expressed in the immediately preceding L2 ut- terance by reformulating it as an Ll rhetorical question.

The use of this annotation format has not only the “linguistic brokerage” effect of ensuring students’ comprehension of L2 topics but also the educationally favourable effect of relating the unfamiliar L2 academic topics to the students’ familiar lifeworld experiences, which are naturally encoded and expressed in the students’ native language. For instance, the teacher in her Ll annotation (059 above) illustrates the preceding L2 topic with an example from the students’ lifeworld: “bou chih Gauluhng Bundou gamyeung” (meaning: “like the Kow- loon Peninsula”). By using the L2-Ll discourse format, the teacher is doing both linguistic brokerage and academic brokerage for her students; she is the impor- tant linguistic and academic intermediary who helps to bridge the gap between the unfamiliar L2 academic world of the school and the familiar Ll lifeworld of the students. She makes English-medium education accessible, meaningful, rele- vant, and thus more bearable and less alienating for students who are in the dilemma of having limited English resources and yet desiring an English-medi- um education for its socioeconomic value (see Section 2).

Although these bilingual classroom practices reflect the teachers’ resistance to the “use-English-only” institutional rule in order to make school learning more meaningful and accessible to their students, their practices, however, also reflect their acquiescence to the domination of English academic monolingualism; that

72 A.M.Y. Lin

is. they accept that the official goal of the curriculum is to establish English academic knowledge, and Chinese academic knowledge does not have a legiti- mate status in the curriculum. The role of Cantonese is only one of annotation. The domination of English academic monolingualism is reflected in the sharp contrast between the frequent instances of “lone” English academic terms (i.e., occurring without their Chinese counterparts) inserted into Cantonese utterances (as in Excerpt 8) and the absence of any instance of “lone” Chinese academic terms inserted into English utterances:

Excerpt 8 (Example 16 in Johnson, 1985, p. 57) 093 hai go hrudkd ne, hai ni douh yahp bihn ne, ho lahng yih ging yauh go

rrrdiw~r~ ,fhrm j 0. (In this heudlnnd, at this place inside, an trrchwq has probably already been

,jbrmd)

The subsidiary status of the Ll having only an annotation role in the class- room is further reflected in the special structure of the knowledge coproduction format (Heap, 1985) that I have recovered from Johnson’s data. The typical knowledge coproduction format in monolingual classrooms has the structure of Elicitation-Response-Feedback (E-R-F); however, the recurrent format I have found in the data has the following expanded structure: E (L2-Ll) - R (LI) - F (Ll -L2). This is exemplified in Excerpt 9 (Example I I in Johnson, 1985, p. 53):

Excerpt 9: 012 013

015 016 011

019

020

Now last time we have talked about the coast of Hong Kong. Do you remember’? What adjective can we use to describe the shape of the coastline of Hong Kong? Hmm? Is it a shape like triangles‘? Squares? Circle’! What kind of shape is it? Hmm? Pihng mh pihng? Haih maih hou pihng gam ga? (Regular or not? Does it appear to be very regular’!) Dim yeung yeung? Hoi on sin haih dim ga? Dim yeung yeung? (What is it like? What is the coastline like? What is it like?) STUDENTS ANSWER” Hah? Waan. Hou waan huk. Hou ngaahm chaahm. (Pardon’! Very curved. Very jagged.) Ngaam mh ngaam a? Haih mh haih? (Is that right? Is it or isn’t it?) So we find that the coast of Hong Kong is very irregular.

In Johnson’s ( 1985) analysis, the preceding is a typical example of teachers accepting LI answers to save time. What is missed in his analysis. however, is that while time may indeed be saved, the more educationally important effect of the use of such an L2-Ll Elicitation sequence (012-O 17) seems to be that of en abling students to contribute to the coproduction of an officially certified

Bilingualism or Linguistic Segregation? 73

corpus of lesson knowledge (Heap, 1985). The L2 and Ll parts of the elicitation sequence are parallel in content to each other: The Ll part basically reformulates the L2 part into a question to which the students can respond by drawing on their familiar Ll knowledge and lifeworld experiences. The conversely structured Ll- L2 Feedback sequence (019-021) following the students’ response serves to ratify the students’ contribution by first echoing it (the students have most proba- bly responded in L 1, given the teacher’s echoing of their answers in Ll) and then translating it and incorporating it into an acceptable English knowledge statement (“So we find the coast of Hong Kong is very . . irregular”), which is to count as part of the official corpus of L2 lesson knowledge coproduced by the teacher and students. The discourse format, E (L2-Ll) - R (Ll) - F (Ll-L2), exemplified in this excerpt reflects the teacher’s attempt to elicit and value any contribution from the students in the process of knowledge coconstruction. Since what the

students are able to offer are often their most familiar knowledge and lifeworld experiences, which are naturally encoded and expressed in their Ll , the teacher uses this special discourse format to elicit, transform, and incorporate their otherwise illegitimate Ll contribution into the official L2 knowledge corpus. This reflects the teacher’s pragmatic response to the dilemma of trying to value and build on all that the students bring with them to the classroom on the one hand and fulfilling the curriculum requirement of building L2 academic knowl- edge on the other.

The bilingual discourse practices of the teachers in the classes observed by Johnson (1985) show that they both value and build on their students’ current knowledge as most educational theories recommend. Their bilingual practices often reflect their attempt to relate culturally and linguistically distant L2 aca- demic topics to students’ familiar lifeworld experiences to make school learning relevant and interesting to them. An example of this is shown here, where a history teacher switches from English to Cantonese to make a pun; he has been teaching about Napoleon and his final campaign at Waterloo:

Excerpt 10 (Example 46 in Johnson, 1985, p. 71) 451 Waterloo. Ngohdeih wan dou Wo-Da-Louh Douh . . . da louh dauh.

(We find Waterloo Road hit father)

The teacher capitalises on the similarity of the historical place name, “Water- loo,” and a road’s name in Hong Kong, as well as the similar sounds of the road’s name and a Cantonese phrase meaning “hit father.” In Johnson’s (1985) analysis, this is an example of a teacher who enjoys making puns. However, it seems to me that the effect created may be more than that of just an enjoyable pun; it may also have the psychological effect of making things that belong to the distant L2 academic world appear as close as those that exist in the student’s immediate Ll lifeworld.

By re-analysing Johnson’s data, I have tried to show that bilingual classroom

practices reveal teachers’ highly creative use of their communicative resources.

74 A.M.Y. Lin

Bilingual discourse practices can have the effect of accultu~tion (e.g.. Excerpt I), efficient classroom management (e.g., Excerpt 2) and establishing a closer relationship with students (e.g., Excerpt 3). They can also have the effect of

establishing bilingual academic knowledge (e.g., Excerpts 4 & 5). Typical biiin- gual discourse formats (e.g.. Excerpts 6-10) reflect the teacher’s role as a linguistic and academic broker rendering English-medium education accessible and meaningful to students with limited English resources. Although they reflect the teachers’ resistance to the “use-English-only” institutional rule in order to make ~ngiish-medium education more bearable and less alienating to the stu- dents, they also reflect the teachers’ acquiescence to the domination of English academic monolingualism. Bilingual classroom practices represent the teachers’ pragmatic response to the many painful dilemmas created by the seemingly self- imposition of an English-mediuIn educati~~n by students and parents who have come from a social world where there is little access to the English symbolic capital necessary for the development of a competence in English and who see English-medium school education as their only chance for a better socio- economic future (see Section 2.2). This self-inlposition of a foreign-language education in turn represents the parents’ and students’ pragmatic response to the symbolic domination of English in the society (see Section 3. I).

Like the human body’s defence mechanisms in response to the invasion of harmful bacteria, the teachers’ and students’ bilingual classroom practices repre- sent their local, pragmatic solutions to the problems created by the imposition 01 a foreign language as the medium of instruction despite their having a common native language. These bilingual practices alleviate the painful dilemmas brought about by the symbolic domination of English in the society. They, however. cannot solve all the problems created by that domination. For instance. students still have to cope with all the written work and assessment in Enghsh, and due to their limited English resources they have to resort to rote mem~~risation strate- gies. Apart from a small number of elite schools, teachers in the majority of Anglo-Chinese schools do not have adequate English resources, either. But the little they have they share with their students by annotating English key terms and key statements through the use of bilingual discourse formats.

However, the Hong Kong government has banned the use of these pragmatic solutions by stereotyping code switching as a pidgin or an interlanguage (set Section I ) and scapegoating it as the cause of educational difficulties, which have in fact resulted from the domination of English (Luke, 1990b). The government’s adoption of the policy of streaming those who leave primary school into English immersion schools or Chinese medium schools since September 1994 has placed the majority of parents. students, teachers. and school principals in even more painful dilemmas. It is to a discussion of the theoretical justification and the educational consequences of the linguistic streaming policy that 1 shall turn in the next section.

Bilingualism or Linguistic Segregation? 75

4. BILINGUALISM OR LINGUISTIC SEGREGATION? THE JUSTIFICATION AND CONSEQUENCES OF THE LANGUAGE

STREAMING POLICY

The major theoretical justification of the streaming policy has come from an article by Swain (1986). In it, she delineates “the separation approach” and “the threshold hypothesis” as two ingredients of the successful use of English as a medium of instruction in Hong Kong. The separation approach is said to be superior to the bilingual approach (which she calls “the mixing approach”) in producing better second-language performance, based on certain studies con- ducted in the North American setting. The threshold hypothesis, which is based on some studies of French immersion in Canada (Cummins & Swain, 1986), states that second-language immersion programmes will bring about high attain- ments in both academic learning and second-language learning only if the stu- dents have attained a threshold level in their first-language cognitive academic proficiency and a threshold level in their L2 proficiency. Based on these two hypotheses, she concludes with the following recommendations:

To conclude, what I am suggesting is that positive intervention needs to occur in the medium of education issue in Hong Kong. The mixing of languages that exists in most Hong Kong secondary schools serves neither the goal of academic achieve- ment nor second language learning to maximum effectiveness. An English medium option can be highly effective in both, and can be justified if it offers both. Thus, in order to provide the necessary conditions for a successful English medium stream, enrolment should be limited to students who have achieved high levels of cognitive academic proficiency in Chinese and who have demonstrated a level of English adequate for being able to profit from instruction in it. (Swain. 1986, p. 6)

These recommendations reflect a straightforward application of theoretical principles in important educational decisions without taking into account the sociocultural, economic, and political context in which educational institutions and practices are situated. The historical and socioeconomic origins of classroom code switching in Hong Kong (See Section 2) have been completely ignored. The recommendations neglect the fact that given the socioeconomic domination of English in Hong Kong and the uneven distribution of English linguistic capital among different social groups in Hong Kong, the objective effect of linguistic streaming will not be the innocuous division of children into one group which learns English by one method (English immersion) and another group which learns by a less effective method (English as a subject). The objective effect of such a streaming policy in the Hong Kong context will be the segregation of children in terms of social class, learning opportunities, cultural opportunities, job and further study possibilities. In this respect, the observations made of French immersion in Canada by Canadian educational researchers (Burns & Olson, 198 1) are instructive to us:

76 A.M.Y. Lin

The fact that one group. which is largely middle class. learns French in what is generally judged to be the most effective way functionally possible (Lapkin, 197X; Shapson & Kaufman, 1978) while the other group. containing most of Northern Ontario’s Anglophone working class, learns a more spotty variety of French 01 none at all. raises profound social policy questions concerning how these groups will relate to each other and to the Francophonc community in the next generation. The consequences also raise policy questions concerning equality of oppor- tunity (Burns & Olson, 198 I. pp. 33-34)

A similar segregation effect is likely to result from the linguistic streaming

policy in Hong Kong, and only with much more disastrous social consequences, given the much greater socioeconomic importance of English in Hong Kong than French in Canada. The Linguistic Society of Hong Kong (I 992) has described the streaming policy as elitist and socially divisive. Elitism, however, does not seem to be a problem for some, who argue that the streaming policy is the best way to produce a highly fluent English elite workforce for the economy (e.g., Goldstein & Liu, 1994; Johnson. 1994).

It appears to me that the greatest problem with the streaming policy in Hong Kong is not elitism per se but elitism-without-meritocrucy; that is, it is not so much a problem to have an elite in a society if everybody in the society has equal opportunities of entering the elite class, and that seems to be what has been assumed by Johnson (I 994), and Goldstein and Liu (1994). However, it is out- right social injustice if only the children of the elite can become members of the elite. Those who support the streaming policy frequently appeal to the economic argument for the importance of English in Hong Kong (see Section 2.1.3) and usually tacitly assume that all children in Hong Kong have the same degree of access to English linguistic capital, their difference in English ability being solely a function of the amount of individual hard work and motivation (e.g., Goldstein & Liu. 1994). The key to understanding the social injustice underlying the streaming policy lies in understanding the two major features of situations of

symbolic domination (Bourdieu, 1991): first, the formation of a universally recognised, unified, legitimised symbolic market; second, the perpetuation of the uneven distribution of symbolic capital across different social groups, with the dominated group having the most limited access to symbolic resources. Both conditions exist in the Hong Kong society (see Section 2). Seen in this context, the Hong Kong government’s streaming policy represents a blatant form of social injustice and symbolic domination, for it has the objective effect of perpetuating the lack of symbolic resources for the ma.jority of children. With the banning ot classroom code switching, teachers can no longer do linguistic brokerage for students who have limited English resources, and their lack of symbolic capital and consequently lack of social mobility are perpetuated.

Since the government’s adoption of the streaming policy in 1994. painful dilemmas have been created for many parents. students. teachers, and school principals. ‘Ib quote a few examples:

1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

Bilingualism or Linguistic Segregation? 77

Some schools that have over the years gradually and partially shifted to Chinese-medium education in certain subjects and certain grades have had to

reverse their efforts because the education department now requires all schools to clearly declare their medium of instruction to be either English or Chinese. They have to switch back to English medium since they do not want to be labelled as second class, as Chinese-medium schools have tradi- tionally been stigmatised given the socioeconomic domination of English in

the society; The education department has advised the majority of schools to change to Chinese-medium schools; however, most schools (about 60% in 1994, ac- cording to Wah Kiu Daily, October 20, 1994) have defied its advice. School principals and teachers in these schools are operating under increasing pres- sure from the education department, which is going to conduct linguistic and academic tests, questionnaire surveys, and classroom observations in these schools to “ascertain the effect of using an inappropriate medium of instruc-

tion.” Some teachers in a school that is among the 30% of schools recommended by the education department to declare themselves as English-immersion schools are reduced to directly reading out from English textbooks in the lessons due to their limited English proficiency; their students complained that given the way these teachers teach, they could do better without a teacher (“Poor English”, 1994). The parents of the children of a school marched to protest their school’s decision to change their medium of instruction to Chinese (Holland, 1994). Some teachers of a school that has decided to change to a Chinese-medium school gave out sighs of helplessness; they said that personally they wanted to teach in Chinese, but they feared that given the socioeconomic impor- tance of English in the society their graduates would not have a bright prospect (“Sighs Over”, 1994).

5. FUTURE DIRECTIONS: A COST-BENEFIT ANALYSIS

Hong Kong is a place plagued with contradictions and paradoxes: It ranked eighth in the 24 “high-income economies” listed in The World Development Report 1992, and yet none of the 24 economies’ highest-earning 20% of house- holds took more than 50% of the society’s total income, with the exception of Hong Kong (Tsang, 1994). There is a widening gap between the rich and the poor (Tsang, 1994), and educational researchers cannot ignore the role played by educational institutions, policies, and practices in producing and reproducing social stratification based on the possession or lack of a mastery of English. The domination of the symbolic market by English and the perpetuation of the uneven distribution of English linguistic capital has continued to construct “social fail- ures” out of the majority of children in Hong Kong. Even if the provision of

78 A.M.Y. Lin

equal socioeconomic and educational opportunities for all children may not be the concern of the elite, they cannot continue to enjoy their benefits in a society that cannot maintain its stability and social cohesion with increasing social in- equalities and youth frustrations.

Some Hong Kong people may attempt to use English to draw a boundary between Hong Kong and China due to their Sinophobia. They stress the role 01 English in keeping the international status of Hong Kong, a status unique and distinct from China (The Nineties Month/y, September 1992). They fear the invasion of the job market by Chinese-educated professionals if they change the British- and English-based professional and higher-education systems. However. in using a foreign language to draw a boundary between Hong Kong and China, they are actually also drawing a boundary within Hong Kong, a boundary be- tween those who have access to English linguistic capital and the ma_jority of Hong Kong Chinese, who do not have such access.

The current low status of Chinese in Hong Kong’s higher-education system and consequently in all sectors of the schooling system (see Section 2. I .?I) continues to undermine the linguistic and cultural identity of the majority of students and their confidence in the value of learning Chinese. Despite the imminent return of Hong Kong’s sovereignty to China in 1997, the majority of students and parents in 1994 still subscribed to the notion that English will continue to be socioeconomically more important than Chinese even after 1997 (Lin, 1996). The effect of such low confidence in the value of Chinese is poor mastery of the Chinese language among the majority of students. On the other hand. since they live in a social world where there is little access to English linguistic and cultural capital, they do not achieve a mastery of English. either.

Hong Kong’s economy has become increasingly dependent on China‘s ccon- only since the 1980s (Ho, 1994). The rise of China’s international economic standing is also impressive: In 1994, the Chinese dollar (Kenminbi) gained jLX in value against the U.S. dollar, and China’s foreign-exchange reserve grew by 1.50% (Ma, 1995). With these rapid economic changes. Chinese is likely to become the language of trade and commerce in Asia (Pease, 1994). English alone cannot maintain the economic success of Hong Kong, and a balanced bilingual competence in both Chinese and English is becoming increasingly economically important.

The late 1990s may be the time to reconsider priorities. Our justification and acceptance of. or acquiescence to, the subordination of all educational goals to the single dominant goal of learning English for its presumed importance to our economy is merely a reflection of a deeper and greater subordination: the total subordination of ourselves to commercialism. The highly examination-oriented,

and English-dominated schooling system serves primarily the function of work-

force training, screening, and credentialling. Hong Kong people must begin to

ask the question that Lee ( 1994, p. 2 18) has asked. “How do issues of the essence of both the Chinese and the Western traditions such as rc’n (humanity). life

Bilingualism or Linguistic Segregation? 79

purposes, social justice, ethics, currently being repressed or ignored within edu- cational discourse be returned to the educative process?” We are becoming more and more like the one-dimensional man and woman in advanced industrial soci- ety (Marcuse, 1964). Hong Kong people have to do a cost-benefit analysis of the current English-dominated schooling system. We can no longer delude ourselves: We are all playing a part in the creation and perpetuation of the many painful dilemmas that parents, students, teachers, and school principals find themselves in if we continue to justify, accept, or acquiesce to the subordination of all cultural and educational goals to the single dominant goal of learning English. More than 20 years ago, Cheng et al. (1973) asked Hong Kong people who accepted an English-dominated education the question, “at what cost?“; today, we need to ask the additional question, “at whose cost?’ As shown in this article, an English-dominated education system yields benefits for a small elite that has access to English symbolic capital at the cost of the majority of Hong Kong people, who do not have such access.

Bilingual classroom discourse is not a pidgin or an interlanguage as the Hong Kong governor would want us to believe. A close analysis of bilingual classroom discourse in Hong Kong schools shows that further research on and improvement of bilingual classroom strategies can lead to the development of effective bilin- gual discourse formats that can serve the valuable functions of establishing balanced academic bilingualism. However, that is not going to happen unless the majority of Hong Kong people reconsider their priorities and put their cultural and educational goals back to the front seat and mobilise to change those poli- cies, institutions, and practices that perpetuate the symbolic domination of En- glish in Hong Kong.

Endnotes

1. The term “linguistic segregation” was first used by So ( 1992) to refer to the recent policy of the government to stream schoolchildren into English-medium or Chinese- medium secondary schools.

2. I am indebted to Dr. K.K. Luke, Mr. Peter Tung, Mr. Caesar Lun, and Dr. Li Wei for sharing with me their knowledge of the usage and possible origins of the word, “Chinglish.”

3. The term “bilingual code” instead of “mixed code” is preferred and used in this article, as the latter has too often been exploited by language purists to refer disparagingly to bilingual language use.

4. The Opium War was triggered in 1840 by the Chinese confiscation and destruction of opium brought into China by British merchant ships. Initially, only Hong Kong Island was ceded to Britain in the Nanking Treaty in 1842. In two subsequent unequal treaties in 1860 and 1898 following more defeats in war, China further ceded Kowloon Peninsula and leased the New Territories to Britain for 99 years; that is, up to 1997. Hong Kong Island, Kowloon Peninsular, and the New Territories together make up the entire territory of Hong Kong.

5. Cantonese is a regional Chinese language widely spoken in the southern Chinese province of Guangdong. Phonologically it is quite distinct from Modern Standard Chinese

80 A.M.Y. Lin

(the national standard language of China. known as “Mandarin” or “Putonghua”); how- ever, there are both overlaps and differences in the grammar and lexis of the two codes. Although linguists and education&s differentiate between Cantonese and Modem Stan- dard Chinese as two distinct codes, Hong Kong Chinese people in their daily life often refer to their own language as ‘fung-man.” meaning “Chinese language.” It is usually the linguist who sees Hong Kong Chinese as in fact speaking Cantonese as their mother tongue and reading and writing a form of Modern Standard Chinese that has been influ- enced by Cantonese lexis and syntax. Hong Kong Chinese themselves, however. usually do not pay attention to these distinctions in their daily language practices. They know that the written style is and should be different from the spoken style of their language. but they consider themselves using “jung-man” all the same. They can distinguish spoken Mandarin or Putonghua from Cantonese but they see them as merely different regional ways of speaking “jung-man” and do not see them as constituting different languages. Ethnically and culturally they regard themselves as Chinese and “jung-man” as their familiar native language in contrast to English. which they do not ordinarily speak among themselves and which they largely see as a language of the “gwai-lou” (a Cantonese slang word referring to westerners).

6. For a brief history of how China’s economy and politics had an influence on Hong Kong, see Daryanani, 1994, p. 419-424.

7. I am indebted to economist Dr. S.Y. Ma for drawing my attention to the implica- tions of this part of China’s history.

8. This situation may change in the late 1990s as China’s open-door trade policy adopted since the 1980s has reestablished China as a powerful economy. Hong Kong‘s imminent reintegration with China in 1997 is another factor for possible change.

9. As someone who has grown up with and been acculturated through the education system in Hong Kong, 1 had this unsettling cxpericnce when I started to critically reflect on many of the long-accepted. taken-for-granted notions such as the one about the indis- putable importance of English for our economy.

IO. A recent example of the use of this legitimisation argument can be seen in the Hong Kong governor’s reply to a legislative councillor’s allegation that the government’s language policy reflected colonialism. The governor replied that what was at issue was not colonialism but the real need for a high tluency in English for certain jobs in the society (Governor Replied, 1994).

II. The brain drain problem results from a large proportion of university-trained professionals emigrating from Hong Kong to western countries since the late 1980s.

12. Individuals who have attained a high level of English proficiency despite their monolingual family and community background arc rare and usually witness a history oi extraordinary personal and family sacrifice and investment; e.g.. the parents encouraged their children to watch English television programmcs although they themselves did not understand a word: they made sacrifices to employ a private English tutor to provide English help to their children; the child spent hours looking up unfamiliar English word\ in the dictionary and sacrificing learning time for other subjects. etc.

13. A teacher in a very prestigious English-medium secondary school points out that there exist some differences between students who have come from the school’s own feeder primary school and those who have been admitted because of their public examina- tion results. The latter’s English usage is less idiomatic. and they have a tendency to adopt inflexible. rote-memorisation strategic3 in their learning, e.g.. they attempt to learn the usage of English prepositions by merely mcmorising examples (Lin. 1996).

Bilingualism or Linguistic Segregation? 81

14. Nonprestigious secondary schools in Hong Kong often cannot attract English- conversant teachers and not infrequently have to employ non-English majors to teach English.

15. Many secondary schools in Hong Kong assign 10 lessons to English language in a six-day cycle of 48 lessons, although Chinese language and math receive only 7 and 6 lessons respectively (Lin, 1996).

16. It is unclear from the transcription provided by Johnson whether the “Oh” is an English “Oh” or Cantonese “Oh,” which sound different but happen to have the same alphabetic representations; so, the onset of the switch may coincide with the exclamation or may be immediately after it.

17. Unfortunately, no actual transcription of students’ answers was provided in John- son ( 1985).

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