Hong Kong English - Lehrstuhl für Englische Sprachwissenschaft

DC-HKE

Welcome!

According to Schneider, Hong Kong English (HKE) progressed from the phase of exonormative stabilization into the phase of nativisation in the 1960s (Schneider, 2007, p. 137). However, with the socio-political changes since 1997 and the fact that the colony has never gained independence, which is a crucial event in the development of a post-colonial variety, it is possible that English in Hong Kong is now developing from a second-language variety to a foreign language (Görlach, 2002). Overall, the status of HKE as a distinct variety remains contested. Thus, the emergence (and possible loss) of any variety-specific features can only be traced by analysing English in Hong Kong through time, for which a diachronic corpus is a necessary precondition. In this DFG-funded project, we undertake a systematic diachronic study of the origins and evolution of English in Hong Kong by building a diachronic corpus of Hong Kong English (DC-HKE). The corpus under development will provide empirical evidence to explore key questions about the evolution, features, and current status of HKE. The text categories selected for the DC-HKE match the corpus design of the LOB-family in order to facilitate comparative studies across varieties, with the numbers being target values.

Cooperation partners

Prof. John Bacon-Shone (Hong Kong University Social Sciences Research Centre)
Prof. Kingsley Bolton
CrossAsia

Hong Kong English at IAWE26

At the IAWE26 Conference held in Gießen, Germany, from 25-27 July 2025, themed “World Englishes through Space and Time,” Aditya Upadhyaya and Carina Stick presented ongoing research from their PhD projects on Hong Kong English. Aditya’s talk, “Tracing the Dynamics of Degree Adverbs in Hong Kong English Newspaper Discourse: A Study on Genre Development and Nativization,” explored the evolution of degree adverbs in newspaper texts, highlighting genre development and nativization processes. Carina’s presentation, “Politeness in Hong Kong Business Correspondence: Investigating Genre Development and Nativization Processes from a Diachronic Perspective,” examined politeness strategies in business correspondence over time, focusing on genre evolution and nativization.

Workshop at ISLE 8, Spain

On September 1, 2025, Ninja Schulz, Aditya Upadhyaya and Carina Stick led a workshop at the ISLE Conference in Santiago de Compostela, Spain, titled Genre Development, Comparability, and Representativeness: Rethinking the Structure of Diachronic Corpora. The pre-conference workshop focused on insights from the compilation of the Diachronic Corpus of Hong Kong English (DC-HKE) across four key periods. The workshop addressed challenges in corpus design, including genre selection, comparability, and representativeness, particularly in the context of Hong Kong’s unique sociopolitical landscape. Key questions explored included how to select representative genres, access historical materials like handwritten business letters, and address genre evolution, such as the shift from traditional letters to memos in business correspondence. Practical challenges such as digitizing historical texts and managing fuzzy boundaries in news types were also discussed, which offered a critical perspective on how corpus design shapes the study of World Englishes.

Genres under development

DC:HKE: Newspaper Discourse

News language continues to evolve in its content and structure to meet diverse social and cultural demands (Conboy 2007: 5) for e.g., news style in Britain has changed from ‘fact-centred’ to a more personal coverage over time (Conboy 2007: 5; Landert, 2014; Temple 2008;). Newspaper discourse in Hong Kong, on the other hand, has evolved differently due to unequal power dynamics between the press and political authorities over centuries. As part of this project, we are collecting and digitizing prominent English-language newspapers from Hong Kong, including The South China Morning Post, The China Mail, The Hongkong Telegraph and The Hong Kong Daily Press, among others. These newspapers provide valuable insights into the historical use and development of English in Hong Kong across different time periods. The digitization process ensures that these archival materials are preserved and made accessible for linguistic analysis, contributing significantly to the construction of the diachronic corpus.

DC-HKE: Business Correspondence

From the very beginnings of the colony, banks and companies (such as the Hong Kong and Shanghai Banking Cooperation and Jardine & Matheson) established their head offices in Hong Kong and maintained a regular correspondence with their London office and other branch offices as well as with Hong Kong-based companies. Besides the British senior and foreign staff, local staff was employed and trained for the business. Within the scope of this project we collect, digitise and analyse business letters and colonial reports from as early as the 1860s until today in order to trace the development of this genre in Hong Kong (also in comparison to its development in Great Britain). With this knowledge about genre development, we will be able to correctly assess varietal features emerging in Hong Kong English.

Book launch featuring a chapter on Hong Kong Business Correspondence

On 7 March 2025, Ninja Schulz, Lisa Lehnen and Carolin Biewer attended a book launch hosted at TU Dortmund and presented their chapter “I shall be glad if you will note…": Studying Early 20th-Century Business Correspondence from Hong Kong to Assess Variety-specific Genre Developments”. The event honoured Prof. Dr. Edgar Schneider’s contribution and influence on research in World Englishes and he was presented the volume World Englishes in the 21st Century. New Perspectives and Challenges to the Dynamic Model (edited by Sofia Rüdiger, Theresa Neumaier, Sven Leuckert and Sarah Buschfeld), which is the first to appear in the series New Directions in World Englishes Research published at Edinburgh University Press. The chapter authored by the team from Würzburg provides first insights into the diachronic development of business correspondence in Hong Kong and emphasises the role of genre in studies of (postcolonial) varieties thereby offering a new perspective to World Englishes research.

Digitizing Data through OCR

A significant challenge in studying business correspondence is that the data needed is often not easily accessible. Therefore, in its initial stages, a significant part of the project consists of archival work to collect data. The digitization of the letters is done with the help of the software OCR4all, which uses optical character recognition to transform images of type- and handwritten texts into machine-encoded text. Similarly, newspapers from earlier periods are also being digitized with OCR4all, ensuring the integration of older historical texts into the corpus. This critical digitization effort is supported by the Zentrum für Philologie und Digitalität (ZPD) at the University of Würzburg, highlighting their collaboration in advancing this project.

Team

PD Dr. Christian Reul
Florian Langhanki
Corinna Keupp, M.A.

Publications and Conference Talks

Biewer, C., Lehnen, L., & Schulz. N. (2020) Modalising expressions in Hong Kong English: Tracing diachronic change from 1928 to 2018. In P. Hohaus & R. Schulze (Eds.), Modal Co-text, Modal Context - Re-Assessing Modal Expressions in the Light of Converging Evidence. John Benjamins.
Schulz, N., Biewer, C., & Lehnen, L. “Hongkongites, Hong Kongers, Hong Kong Belongers? Tracing identity (re)constructions in news discourse in Hong Kong from 1903 to 1999” English World-Wide, 41(3), 295-324.
Schulz, N., Lehnen, L., & Neumaier, T. "Conventionalization, Specialisation, Instituionalisation: Exploring Communicative Practices and Genre Developments in Letter Writng." ICAME46, Vilnius University, Lithuania, June 17-21, 2025.
Lehnen, L., Neumaier, T., & Schulz, N. "Conventionalization, Specialisation, Instituionalisation: Discussing communicative practices and genre developments in letter writng." ICAME46, Vilnius University, Lithuania, June 17-21, 2025.
Stick, C. "Politeness in Hong Kong business correspondence: a diachronic perspective on requests (results from 1900 to 1969)". 26th conference of the International Association for World Englishes (IAWE26), Justus Liebig University, Giessen, 25-27 July 2025.
Stick, C. "Conventionalization of politeness strategies in Hong Kong business correspondence: A diachronic perspective on the use of requests." ICAME46, Vilnius University, Lithuania, June 17-21, 2025.
Stick, C. "Requests in Hong Kong business correspondence: initial results from the 1920s and 1940s". 5th Nachwuchstagung Englische Linguistik (NEL-5), Justus Liebig University Gießen, March 10, 2025.
Stick, C. "Requests and their supportive moves in Hong Kong business correspondence: initial results". Discourse-Pragmatic Variation in Postcolonial English Contexts (DVPEC), University Alliance Ruhr, February 6-7, 2025.
Stick, C. “Politeness in Hong Kong Business Correspondence.” FJUEL 2024 - Annual conference of the Forum Junge Englische Linguistik in Bayern, University of Bamberg, October 11-12, 2024.
Upadhyaya, A. "Dynamics of degree adverbs in Hong Kong English Newspaper discourse: Preliminary Findings." 26th conference of the International Association for World Englishes (IAWE26), Justus Liebig University, Giessen, 25-27 July 2025.
Upadhyaya, A. "The use of degree adverbs in Hong Kong English Newspaper discourse: Preliminary Findings." ICAME46, Vilnius University, Lithuania, June 17-21, 2025.
Upadhyaya, A. "Degree Adverbs in Hong Kong English Newspaper Writing: Initial Findings". 5th Nachwuchstagung Englische Linguistik (NEL-5), Justus Liebig University Gießen, March 10, 2025.
Upadhyaya, A. “Tracing the Dynamics of Degree Adverbs in Hong Kong English Newspaper Discourse.” FJUEL 2024 - Annual conference of the Forum Junge Englische Linguistik in Bayern, University of Bamberg, October 11-12, 2024.
Schulz, N., Biewer, C., & Lehnen, L. “Tracing identity (re)constructions in Hong Kong from 1903-1999.” 40th Annual Conference of the International Computer Archive of Modern and Medieval English (ICAME 40), University of Neuchâtel, June 1-5, 2019.

PhD Projects

Carina Stick: Politeness in Hong Kong business correspondence: investigating genre development and nativization processes from a diachronic perspective

Aditya Upadhyaya: Tracing the Dynamics of Degree Adverbs in Hong Kong English Newspaper Discourse: A Study on Genre Development and Nativization

Our Team

Hubland Süd, Geb. PH1

Lehrstuhl für Englische Sprachwissenschaft