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Few Sino‐Tibetan bilingualisms are celebrated in Amdo Tibet. Registers like "mixed language," "peasant language," and vernacular Mandarins are denounced through their perceived association with Chinese colonial influence. However, Putonghua‐Tibetan "bilinguals" are revered among the same demographic. When Tibetan and Chinese language communities intersect each other, a concern for many arises as to how one calibrates one's own "bi‐ness" as a Tibetan bilingual. In this paper, I explore how "Sinicized" figures are configurated for Tibetans. I argue that language works in many ways to disrupt previously stable ethnoracial identities as well as to mediate ethnoracial alignment or a lack thereof. Intersectional personae—binding intersections of linguistic repertoires with biographic fractals like gender, class, race/ethnicity, sexuality, profession, and many more—personify such disruptions for users of languages. I also describe the affective motion—or ethnoracialized anxieties and aspirations— in adopting or sidestepping these intersectional personae for a population that feel they are going through racialization (for different publics) in many aspects of their lives. Attending to intra‐ethnoracial evaluations, I also delineate and compare vernacular colonialism and Putonghua colonialism in showing that "same but different" registers might be a vantage point to a more empirical understanding of Sino‐ as well as other forms of colonialism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In Mongolian culture, wedding speeches are a traditional component of a marriage celebration, but in bilingual, bicultural urban Inner Mongolia, China, two hybrid genres have emerged which reflect competing ideologies of languages and speakers. There can be a Mongolian performance with a commentary in Chinese, or a blended Mongolian and Chinese language performance. In these hybrids, Mongolian is often associated with a minority status but an authentic tradition, while Chinese seems to represent a modern majority, but alien, culture. By situating the hybrid and bilingual Mongolian wedding speech genre in the contexts of Mongolian cultural loss and revival, urbanization, and the increasing weight of the Chinese state's political discourse in public space, the study unravels the complexity and contestations inherent in a hybridized traditional Mongolian speech genre. Drawing on the inherent duality of genre, that is its boundedness/monology and its plasticity/heteroglossia, this paper presents ethnographic evidence of these sociolinguistic representations, and contributes to the understanding of hybrid genre, agency, and a transforming expressive culture in the context of social displacement, cultural shift, and internal colonization in China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite an emerging focus on poor comprehenders in recent reading research, a number of unresolved issues concerning the cognitive and linguistic underpinnings of this disorder remain. In this special issue, we bring together a set of six papers examining the strengths and weaknesses of different types of poor comprehenders across multiple languages, including English, French and Chinese. Key findings of these studies show that certain oral language skills, such as morphological awareness and syntactic awareness, are related to reading comprehension deficits in different languages, suggesting their universality. Intriguingly, dissociability and co-occurrence of reading comprehension difficulties have been identified in bilingual children whose L1 and L2 are quite disparate, with some bilinguals exhibiting reading comprehension deficits in a single language, while others display these deficits in both languages. These issues and their implications for future research are further discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper sets out to discuss creativity and world Englishes from a range of perspectives. It begins with a discussion of the changing face of English studies over recent decades, and then proceeds to discuss definitions of 'creativity' and 'bilingual creativity'. In the later sections of the paper, there is discussion of postcolonial literature and world fiction in English, with particular reference to the work of Timothy Mo. Finally, the implications of this discussion for contemporary English studies in Hong Kong are also considered. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Inspired by Schneider's (2007) innovative Dynamic Model, this paper traces the rise of English-knowing bilingualism in Hong Kong by analysing the authorship of 1,379 letters published in the city's leading English-language newspapers since the early 1840s. The evidence points to three main phases in the evolution of this community: 1840s-1910s, 1920s-1970s, 1980s-present. In the first phase, the bilingual segment of the Chinese community was apparently microscopic or, in the words of a colonial official, 'infinitesimal'. The second and third phases may be characterised as periods of spreading minority and majority bilingualism respectively. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ABSTRACT: One of the dominant themes of the literature on language in Hong Kong is the belief that English, particularly its spoken form, plays a limited role in the lives of the territory's mainly Cantonese-speaking Chinese community. For this reason, it is argued, there is no societal basis for the development of a nativised variety of English. One of the limitations of the case against Hong Kong English is that it is based on expert opinion rather than empirical evidence about the nature and extent of English use in the lives of Hong Kong bilinguals. This paper examines the results of a survey involving more than 2,000 English users in Hong Kong which sought to generate much-needed baseline data about patterns of language choice and use in one centrally important and hitherto overlooked domain: the professional workplace. The findings indicate that Hong Kong professionals spend a significant proportion of their working lives reading and writing English texts. Although Cantonese is the usual medium of oral communication, spoken English also plays an important role, particularly in formal situations. The findings also suggest that the need for English increases as a professional rises through the ranks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ABSTRACT: This paper is a review of the major works in code-switching in Hong Kong to date. Four context-specific motivations commonly found in the Hong Kong Chinese press -- euphemism, specificity, bilingual punning, and principle of economy -- are adduced to show that English is one of the important linguistic resources used by Chinese Hongkongers to fulfill a variety of well-defined communicative purposes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Poor comprehenders have reading comprehension difficulties but normal word recognition ability. Here, we report the first study, which investigated (i) the dissociation and (ii) the prevalence of L1-L2 reading comprehension difficulties, and (iii) the levels of key metalinguistic skills in poor comprehenders among Chinese-English bilingual children. From a sample of 124 Chinese-English second graders, we identified 18 poor comprehenders (six Chinese, six English, and six in both Chinese and English). We matched these with six average comprehenders of comparable age and word reading abilities. Multivariate analysis of covariance and univariate F tests revealed that poor Chinese comprehenders and poor English comprehenders had significantly lower levels of Chinese lexical tone awareness than average readers even after controlling for nonverbal intelligence. No significant differences emerged on scores for segmental phonological awareness and vocabulary knowledge, either in Chinese and English or on English lexical stress sensitivity. These findings were discussed in relation to the universal view of reading, cross language prosodic transfer and the simple view of reading. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many agencies actively recruit bilingual social workers. This study presents the reactions of 10 Chinese bilingual social workers to the expectations and demands of their agencies. The study employed a qualitative design with a phenomenological approach. The participants' responses provide insight into how they manage ethnic and cultural mental health issues in Chinese populations. This study aims to improve social service delivery for clients with limited English proficiency by identifying effective, culturally competent services. The findings suggest that when hiring bilingual social workers, it is just as important for them to be culturally competent as it is for them to be an ethnic or language match with the client base. Having all of these qualities will result in staff members who can provide more effective services by making accurate diagnoses and identifying appropriate treatment plans. In addition to employing bilingual social workers, it is important to maintain good supervision as this will allow supervisees to have a unique perspective on what is involved in providing effective delivery of services to clients with limited English proficiency. Implications for research, practice, and policy are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]