Sociolinguistic Artifacts

This article is about the language battle between Cantonese and Putonghua (Mandarin Chinese). Even though Hong Kong returned to China in 1997, the social rejection of Putonghua still takes place in Hong Kong. In this case, it illustrates the effect of language ideologies. People in Hong Kong reject to speak Putonghua because they question their Chinese identity. Their interpretation of language is that speaking Putonghua makes people lost the identity but speaking Cantonese could protect their culture and history. Importantly, this is the way to clarify the identity. People in Hong Kong believe that Hong Kong is not a part of China, and Cantonese is not one of the dialects of Chinese. Also, they argue Cantonese is the standard "Chinese." [Published on 06-29-2017]