Brainwashing or nurturing positive values : competing voices in Hong Kong's national education debate
Document Type
Journal article
Source Publication
Journal of Pragmatics
Publication Date
12-1-2014
Volume
74
First Page
1
Last Page
14
Keywords
Moral and National Education; Metaphors; The fight metaphor; Semantic preferences and prosodies; Media reports and press releases
Abstract
This corpus-based discourse analytical study compares the use of collocations, semantic preferences, semantic prosodies and metaphors in the news reports and Hong Kong Government press releases concerning the introduction of the school subject Moral and National Education in Hong Kong in 2012. The analysis of word co-occurrences with the phrase ‘national education’ in the two corpora shows that journalists use various FIGHT metaphors to describe the attitudes and actions of protesters and the responses of the government. However, the government press releases are much more literal, showing a neutral to positive tone and implying that when the planned introduction was shelved, national education will be re-introduced in the future.
DOI
10.1016/j.pragma.2014.08.006
Print ISSN
03782166
Publisher Statement
Copyright © 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
Access to external full text or publisher's version may require subscription.
Full-text Version
Publisher’s Version
Language
English
Recommended Citation
Cheng, W., & Ho, J. (2014). Brainwashing or nurturing positive values: Competing voices in Hong Kong's national education debate. Journal of Pragmatics, 74, 1-14. doi: 10.1016/j.pragma.2014.08.006