English in the linguistic landscape of Hong Kong: A case study of shop signs and linguistic competence

2010–2011

This was my MA research project and it was con­cerned with the ques­tion of how a lin­guis­tic land­scape reflects the lin­guis­tic com­pe­tence of its inhab­i­tants. The notion of the lin­guis­tic land­scape denotes the pres­ence and dis­tri­b­u­tion of both lin­guis­tic and semi­otic signs in pub­lic space, so Lin­guis­tic Land­scape research gen­er­al­ly adopts a mul­ti­modal per­spec­tive.

The object of study in this project was Hong Kong, a city not only famous for its rich lin­guis­tic land­scape, but also known for host­ing a renowned vari­ety of Eng­lish – Hong Kong Eng­lish. I col­lect­ed data in two streets of Hong Kong: one of them a street in an eco­nom­i­cal­ly thriv­ing area and the oth­er one sit­u­at­ed in a work­ing-class yet up-and-com­ing neigh­bour­hood.

The ratio­nale behind this selec­tion was that Eng­lish would be spo­ken more flu­ent­ly in the eco­nom­ic dis­trict than in the work­ing-class neigh­bour­hood, and that this would be reflect­ed in the lin­guis­tic land­scape of the two areas.

The data col­lect­ed for this project includ­ed the doc­u­men­ta­tion of the amount of Eng­lish present in the lin­guis­tic land­scape of the two streets, fol­lowed by a ques­tion­naire dis­trib­uted among shop assis­tants in the two streets, as well as by an anony­mous sur­vey of their Eng­lish lev­el. The study revealed that the lin­guis­tic land­scape in fact reflect­ed the lin­guis­tic com­pe­tence of its inhab­i­tants.

If you’re inter­est­ed in the results, find my MA the­sis here.

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Cultural models of gender and homosexuality in Indian and Nigerian English

2012–2021

Through my MA research, in which I had gained expe­ri­ence in the field of so-called World Eng­lish­es, I was very intrigued by how speak­ers in post­colo­nial set­tings make Eng­lish their own, through appro­pri­at­ing it to their own unique cul­tur­al habi­tats. I there­fore chose to focus on two fur­ther vari­eties of Eng­lish, name­ly Indi­an Eng­lish and Niger­ian Eng­lish.

In par­tic­u­lar, I was inter­est­ed in how speak­ers of these two vari­eties of Eng­lish would under­stand gen­der and homo­sex­u­al­i­ty, that is how gen­der- and homo­sex­u­al­i­ty-relat­ed pat­terns of thought or, to use the con­ven­tion­al term, cul­tur­al con­cep­tu­al­i­sa­tions would be reflect­ed in lan­guage (use) and whether there were dif­fer­ences between Indi­an and Niger­ian Eng­lish. In order to exam­ine these pat­terns of thought, I made use of the ana­lyt­i­cal and method­olog­i­cal tool­box of Cul­tur­al Lin­guis­tics and Cog­ni­tive Soci­olin­guis­tics, which are two cul­tur­al­ly ori­ent­ed off­springs of Cog­ni­tive Lin­guis­tics.

The col­lect­ed data con­sist­ed of 73 soci­olin­guis­tic inter­views that I con­duct­ed in Del­hi (India), Ibadan (Nige­ria) and – since British Eng­lish served as a ref­er­ence vari­ety – Man­ches­ter (Eng­land). I fur­ther realised an online sur­vey with Indi­an, Niger­ian and British Eng­lish speak­ers and also includ­ed an analy­sis of 18 films from India and Nige­ria, thus adding a mul­ti­modal com­po­nent to the study. For the iden­ti­fi­ca­tion of homo­sex­u­al­i­ty-relat­ed pat­terns of thought, pre­colo­nial and colo­nial texts, as well as ora­ture also served as a data­base.

After I had iden­ti­fied a large num­ber of cul­tur­al con­cep­tu­al­i­sa­tions, for exam­ple ver­bal­ly ren­dered con­cep­tu­al metaphors and cul­tur­al schemas, I extrap­o­lat­ed from these occur­rences and pro­posed four dif­fer­ent cul­tur­al mod­els. A cul­tur­al mod­el can be under­stood as the fun­da­men­tal log­ic through which knowl­edge about a cer­tain con­cep­tu­al domain is men­tal­ly organ­ised and as such it can be seen as a net­work of inter­re­lat­ed and log­i­cal­ly coher­ent cul­tur­al con­cep­tu­al­i­sa­tions.

It was found that in the Indi­an gen­der mod­el, pat­terns of thought and behav­iour regard­ing gen­der seem to revolve around the goal of main­tain­ing fam­i­ly or male hon­our, and the means of achiev­ing this goal is seg­re­gat­ing peo­ple accord­ing to their gen­der. In con­trast to the Indi­an mod­el, the Niger­ian gen­der mod­el is ori­ent­ed towards a prin­ci­ple of coop­er­a­tion between women and men with the goal of main­tain­ing fam­i­ly struc­tures cross-gen­er­a­tional­ly.

In terms of the two cul­tur­al mod­els of homo­sex­u­al­i­ty, the study showed that homo­sex­u­al­i­ty was more promi­nent­ly under­stood as an innate con­di­tion in Indi­an Eng­lish, while it was fore­most­ly con­cep­tu­alised as an acquired con­di­tion in Niger­ian Eng­lish.

The full results of this project will soon be pub­lished as a mono­graph. You can also down­load an ear­li­er ver­sion of the man­u­script, in the form of my sub­mit­ted PhD the­sis, on Research­Gate or Acad­e­mia.

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Cognitive Contact Linguistics

2015-present

My inter­est in the field of Cog­ni­tive Con­tact Lin­guis­tics start­ed with a talk in a the­mat­ic pan­el of the same name at the 13th Inter­na­tion­al Cog­ni­tive Lin­guis­tics Con­fer­ence in New­cas­tle upon Tyne, Eng­land, in 2015. The pan­el was organ­ised by Eline Zen­ner from KU Leu­ven, who in her pre­vi­ous research had intro­duced the idea of estab­lish­ing a Cog­ni­tive Con­tact Lin­guis­tics. What is new about this approach is that it no longer looks at lan­guage con­tact mere­ly from a struc­tur­al point of view, mean­ing that the out­come of lan­guage con­tact should not only be exam­ined at the lin­guis­tic sur­face lev­el. Instead, lan­guage con­tact is seen to impact at the con­cep­tu­al lev­el already.

In a fol­low-up pub­li­ca­tion from 2019, Hans-Georg Wolf and I sug­gest­ed that con­cep­tu­al metaphors in non-native Eng­lish­es can be con­sid­ered con­tact phe­nom­e­na when they con­cep­tu­al­ly blend input mate­r­i­al from two or more lin­guis­tic and cul­tur­al con­texts. I believe that Cog­ni­tive Con­tact Lin­guis­tics is a con­se­quen­tial devel­op­ment of the study of lan­guage con­tact and will con­tin­ue to work with this nov­el approach.

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Cultural models: Towards a unified theory and methodology

2022-present

Since I had dealt exten­sive­ly with the notion of the “cul­tur­al mod­el” in my PhD project, I found that there is no con­sis­tent and uni­fied def­i­n­i­tion of the con­cept in the lit­er­a­ture, which is why var­i­ous schol­ars have very dif­fer­ent ways of under­stand­ing the notion. This goes hand in hand with a lack of a method­olog­i­cal dis­cus­sion, so the data­base and the range of applied meth­ods varies wide­ly in stud­ies con­cerned with iden­ti­fy­ing cul­tur­al mod­els. As I believe that the cul­tur­al mod­el is of cen­tral impor­tance to research in a cul­tur­al­ly ori­ent­ed Cog­ni­tive Lin­guis­tics, I’ll con­tin­ue to ded­i­cate myself to the top­ic more thor­ough­ly by address­ing its the­o­ret­i­cal and method­olog­i­cal impli­ca­tions.

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The use and influence of digital media for social cohesion in diaspora communities

2024-present

In my func­tion as a researcher in the ReDI­Co project, this is the empir­i­cal study I’m cur­rent­ly work­ing on. Here’s the descrip­tion of the study from the ReDI­Co web­site:

“Online com­mu­ni­ca­tion plays a major role for immi­grants and their affil­i­a­tion with­in dias­po­ra com­mu­ni­ties. This study explores the impact of social media upon migrants’ iden­ti­ties and feel­ings of belong­ing. We inves­ti­gate how their online com­mu­nica­tive actions influ­ence – and are influ­enced by – their social cohe­sion in this new con­text.”

If you’re inter­est­ed in how my study will con­tin­ue, keep in touch via this web­site, via Research­Gate or via Acad­e­mia.