LANGUAGE AND IDENTITY
OF
AFRICAN COMMUNITY WORKERS
IN HK
By Lord Yeung, Samson Wong, Koy Kwong & Sarah Macbride
We are a group of students from the University of Hong Kong working on our course LCOM3001: Cultural Dimensions of Language and Communication instructed by Dr Lisa Lim. In this website, we are glad to share our insight(s) on some language and identity issues regarding African community workers in Hong Kong. Meanwhile, please join us in exploring some interesting aspects about Africa.
Sit back and RELAX. Let's begin with some COOL African Music : )
WHO WE ARE?
On perspective #1: Language in the shaping of cultural identity
Assumption: Literary Review
Assumption:
Review of
Scholar
Writings
Observation:
Evidence from
Ali and Dixon
Cases
Analysis:
Correlation of shift in first language &
identity
How Do We Reach Our Conclusion?
Many scholars have recognized the important role that a shared language can play in bringing people together and in giving them distinctive identities. One of the most prominent ideas in this aspect is raised by Ochs (1993). Ochs ties language acquisition to the learner’s social group. It is hard to acquire a language and speak it as a native without being associated with the social group that speaks it. We can easily picture that people speaking the same home language, like those who belong to the same racial group or the same region of origin, are very likely to feel that they have something significant in common and thus share a sense of affinity. Cultural identity hence became intricately bound with language and began to be built on linguistic difference.
Observation#1: Language Shift
First, we take a look on the defintion of language shift.
Language shift is a process in which successive generations of speakers, both at gradually lose proficiency in their mother tongues or the language of their speech community in favour of other languages.
(Fishman ,1964)
Then, let's observe how language shift took place in Ali and Dixon's families.
Observation#2: Change In Cultural Identity
Intriguingly, shift in cultural identity is simultaneously -discovered in both cases. The self-perception of identity changes across three generations. The following chart clearly shows the shift.
Analysis: First Language Influential Impact On Identity
From the graph, we can observe a direct relation between acquisition of first language and the perception of identity. For the first generation, they have a strong perception of being the Black African. This can be explained by the acquisition of indigenous African languages as their mother tongue. Indeed, they can only speak these African languages for the entire life.
For the second generation, they also recognize themselves as Black African like the parents do. They are multilingual due to education, social upward mobility and some other factors. Yet, the Black African identity is deeply tied to their mother tongue. Even though moving to several different cities for years, their cultural identities do not shift by learning new languages. Both Ali and Dixon emphasize that they are Black Africans but in Diaspora.
However, when coming to the third generation, there is a significant change in perception of cultural identity. As being born and raised in Hong Kong, Ali and Dixon’s children acquire English as first language. More importantly, they have learnt Cantonese in school since very young ages, meanwhile losing the competence in African home language. Hence, they no longer perceive themselves as pure Black African because people tend to bond together on the basis of linguistic affinity in daily life. A share language of English and Cantonese hence bring the third generation close to the local community here and distinguish themselves as Afro-Chinese.