Abstract—Indigenized English varieties in Asia such as
Singlish and Hong Kong English have attracted considerable
attention amongst both scholars and the local public. Unlike
Singlish which is widely accepted by Singaporeans, the local
attitude towards Hong Kong English is more complicated. This
paper explores the ideologies of Hong Kong English through a
discussion of empirical surveys, and a case study about the word
guanxi engaging analysis of media reports, complaint letters,
and corpus data. Recent negative responses to the inclusion of
guanxi as a Hong Kong English word in the Oxford English
Dictionary suggest that the distinctiveness from the mainland is
highlighted in Hong Kong identity, which Hongkongers want to
be reflected in Hong Kong English. This paper shows that the
perception of Hong Kong English reflects and is influenced by
the construction of local identity, oriented to instrumental,
cultural, and social aspects, which is fluid and dynamic given
the changing social and political environment.
Index Terms—Hong Kong English, Guanxi, identity.
Chenzi Xu is with the Faculty of Linguistics, Philology and Phonetics,
University of Oxford, Walton Street, Oxford, OX1 2HG, UK (e-mail:
chenzi.xu@ling-phil.ox.ac.uk).
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Cite:Chenzi Xu, "Char Siu is Better Than Guanxi? Identity in Hong Kong English," International Journal of Languages, Literature and Linguistics vol. 5, no. 2, pp. 62-70, 2019.