Linguistic capital: Continuity and change in educational language polices for South Asians in Hong Kong primary schools

Linguistic capital: Continuity and change in educational language polices for South Asians in Hong Kong primary schools

• Fang, Gao Faculty of Education, University of Hong Kong

Current Issues in Language Planning, 12(2), 251-263, 2011

Routledge

2011

• R Educational Policy & Administration
  • RC Educational Planning & Decision Making Process, Educational Administration

• Hong Kong

• 1997.7 onwards

• Primary Education

Language-in-education policies within post-colonization, nationalism, and globalization are currently key concerns of the sociology of language as they impact language teaching and learning in multilingual contexts. Despite these concerns, studies of educational language policies for ethnic minorities, in this case, those of South Asians in Hong Kong, are rare. This paper looks at colonial and post-colonial language policies in education with an eye to shedding light on continuity and change of linguistic capital for this group. Given the complexity, contextuality, complicity, complementarity, and continuity of the approach, the research analyzes the influences of educational language policies concerning South Asians, especially at primary school level, in pre- and post-colonial times. It argues that while English linguistic capital predominates during both pre- and post-colonial periods, this predominant status has begun to be shared by Cantonese, which has emerged as the'high' language in post-handover Hong Kong and forms the main barrier for South Asians to learn Chinese as a second language to enable upward mobility in Hong Kong society.
[Copyright of Current Issues in Language Planning is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14664208.2011.609687]

• English

Journal Articles

• 14664208

• 10.1080/14664208.2011.609687

https://bibliography.lib.eduhk.hk/bibs/a8b8cf7e

2014-10-28