We in Hong Kong : claiming to speak for the community
Document Type
Journal article
Source Publication
Asian Englishes
Publication Date
1-1-1999
Volume
2
Issue
2
First Page
5
Last Page
24
Abstract
In the run-up to the handover in Hong Kong in 1997 there was much debate about its future identity. Many “experts” and politicians put forward views that purported to be representative of Hong Kong people. One linguistic feature in this debate was the use of the pronoun we when referring to the entire community. This paper reports a survey which examined the use of this “generic” we and other first person plural pronouns in political comment in the South China Morning Post both before and after the handover. Generally, it was found that generic we was a common feature of such writing and appeared to be the default interpretation. There was no evidence that the amount of “claiming to speak for the community” had decreased after the handover. The shifting of the reference of first person plural pronouns within articles was rare. One unexpected finding was the frequency with which generic we appeared to be anaphoric in nature, referring back to an explicit introductory noun phrase.
DOI
10.1080/13488678.1999.10801029
Print ISSN
13488678
Publisher Statement
Copyright © 1999 ALC Press, Inc. Access to external full text or publisher's version may require subscription.
Full-text Version
Publisher’s Version
Language
English