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

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