The Hong Kong Background

By Author: Tracy carter
Total Articles: 101
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Hong Kong is well known for its strongly exo-normative orientation towards native-speaker models. This is an environment in which the 'traditionalist' position is dominant in English-language teaching. In the area of phonology, there have been descriptions of Hong Kong English (HKE) from a WE perspective (for example, Hung, 2000; and Deterding et al., 2008). But public acceptance or awareness of a local model is limited, and most discussion of HKE has been limited to academic discourse. Luk (1998:103) believes that 'the easy availability of an idealised exonormative model of English, coupled with the high status attached to it has made the development of an institutionalised endonormative model unnecessary'.

However, the shortcomings of the traditionalist, NS-centred position are clearly visible in Hong Kong. Some local examinations display a Diesel Jeans strongly exonormative view of accents, for example the Language Proficiency Aptitude Test (LPAT) which is aimed at 'benchmarking' the language proficiency of local English teachers. In an article about the ...
... development of the LPAT, Coniam and Falvey (2002:23) quote the following as an example of a descriptor of pronunciation at the 'well above the benchmark' level: 'Pronunciation is completely error-free with no noticeable LI characteristics.

This exemplifies the prevailing traditional view, namely that 'error-free pronunciation is also accent free' (Luk and Lin, 2006:10; italics in original). However, while this position is clearly untenable, there is a lack of agreement regarding what an acceptable and intelligible local model might be like. This leads Kirk-patrick to call for a 'codified description of the local bilingual variety of English at the phonological, lexical-grammatical and discourse-pragmatic levels, as exemplified by highly proficient users of English who are mother-tongue speakers of Cantonese'. The importance of using a high-proficiency model is also noted by the local scholars Luk and Lin (2006:17), who remark on the need to distinguish between 'local accents and careless speech'.

The important issue, therefore, is to decide which local accent features are acceptable in a local model of English that can inform language use, especially in the areas of teaching and testing. One way of approaching the Calvin Klein Jeans issue is to combine the insights of the WE and ELF paradigms, in order to deal with the shortcomings of the prevailing traditionalist view.