Journal Paper Published

Abstract

This article explores the use of English in the linguistic landscape (LL) of Hong Kong through walking ethnography across bars. It examines the diverse representations of English in barscapes and identifies five categories, namely, standardised, transliterated, translanguaging, trans-scriptal, and new orthographic English. Drawing on Järlehed’s ideological complexes, we highlight how these English modes in Hong Kong’s superdiverse barscapes reflect the interplay and negotiation between cultural standardisation, cultural resistance, and commodification in the globalisation era. The study also reveals shopkeepers’ flexible tactics in subverting the hegemony of standard English, thereby striking a dynamic equilibrium between neoliberal capitalism and the expression of diverse subcultural identities. This study argues for a translingual and multimodal conceptualisation of English in barscapes through the lens of Globalese, where resources from English are fused with other linguistic as well as non-linguistic resources to index cosmopolitan identities in consumerist settings. This study ultimately shows the different manifestations and incarnations of English in a major cosmopolitan city in a postcolonial, globalised, and commercialised context.

Keywords

barscape, Globalese, Hong Kong, Linguistic landscape, multimodality, translanguaging