Kayla Tam

1

English as a Post-colonial Elite Language

Seventeen years after the end of British rule in Hong Kong, English still plays a large role
in the admission process for higher education. Parents fight to send their children to English as
Medium of Instruction (EMI) secondary schools, private schools and international schools so
that their children have a better chance of acquiring proficiency in the English language and
being admitted to universities. Fluency in English is both a social marker, indicating whether one
belongs to the elite class, and to an extent a class marker, reflecting ones socioeconomic
background, since private schools and international schools generally have high tuition fees,
while aided schools provide free education. The more fluent or native ones English is, the more
likely that ones family enjoyed economic and educational success during the colonial period.
For people who speak English as their first language, the title of my reflection may seem
alienating. The purpose of this reflection is not to argue who counts as a Hongkonger based on
the language one speaks, or to propose eradicating the language from our society, or call out the
well-off in our society. Rather, by examining the English language in the post-colonial social
context of Hong Kong, we have a better chance at diversifying our understanding of a Hong
Kong identity.
Ones fluency at a language can determine ones membership in a social group. Being an
English major, I am one of the few non-native English speakers in the department at Carleton
College. I am often aware of my English fluency and accent, because I see that a good command
of the language can compensate racial differences between me and my classmates as well as help
me attain in-group membership among other English majors. Beyond the English department, I
sense that people are more willing to listen to me or they identify with me more readily because
of how I speak.
When I arrived at the conference, the politics of linguistic fluency jumped out at me even
though I did not need to prove my group membership among fellow Hongkongers and people
who are invested in the future of Hong Kong. However, I was still careful about the way I spoke,
because I felt that I must speak fluent English without a Cantonese accent to compensate for
class differences. Both from the conference and the larger social context of Hong Kong, I
observe a correlation between ones fluency in English with ones socioeconomic background,
which usually manifests in ones education experiences, e.g. having attended a prestigious EMI
school, a private school, or an international school, and ones familys education background, e.g.
one or both parents have had higher education in colonial Hong Kong. I want to be clear that
there is absolutely nothing wrong with speaking English as ones first language or speaking it
more fluently than the average person. Similarly, there is also nothing wrong with being more
or less well-off than others. My own upbringing in a lower class family makes me aware that
there are many exceptions to the trend I observed. I do not doubt that my fellow conference
attendees used English as a lingua franca instead of other reasons, but I argue that the privileging
of English fluency in Hong Kongs society has a tinge of colonial flavor. The continued use of
English as a selection tool in our education system is not a sign that Hong Kong has made a
smooth transition from a colonial city to an international city, instead it is evidence that we have
not decolonialized our society at least in terms of its education system and with it, our elite class.
A study in 2008 led by Professor Tsang Wing-kwong of the Department of Educational
Administration and Policy at Chinese University of Hong Kong shows that students who attend
Chinese as Medium of Instruction (CMI) schools have significantly smaller chance of
advancement to tertiary education than their counterparts in (EMI) schools. While the
Kayla Tam
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controversy surrounding mediums of instruction in secondary schools is a continuous debate, this
study reflects that the command of English language can decide ones shot at further education.
Although there are many ways one can become a member of the elite class, attending university
is one of the most common ways to attain that status. The system privileges students from
affluent and/or educated families even more because their parents most likely are fluent speakers
of English themselves. Since Hong Kong reached international renown as a city during colonial
times and continues to exist as an international city, there is the illusion on the government level
as well as the citizen level that we have dealt with our colonial legacy. Thus, the discourse of the
English language is not simply a linguistic one, but it is also wrapped up in postcolonialism,
class, and bureaucracy.
As the generations go on, the colonial influence reverberating in the English we speak
right now may lessen and wears off. As liberal-minded people, we might not care by what means
our fellow Hongkongers attain their English fluency, but it is worthwhile to examine our
societys attitude towards our colonial legacies. While English as a global lingua franca has its
own political problems and cultural implications, revering a language simply because of its
colonial or Western association is not helpful in building our local identity.
I do not deny that my fluency in English has given me social mobility that I could not
have otherwise enjoyed. At the conference, I was rather shocked to realize that I am now
considered one of the university-educated, well-travelled, cosmopolitan young people. As a
creative fiction writer, I see Western influences in my language, and the exercise for me is to
decolonialize English as a language and reclaim it as my own so that I can use it to write about
people and places in Hong Kong. I believe that acknowledging our colonial legacies and
reclaiming English as our own without marginalizing a large group of students is an exercise
worth undertaking in the process of understanding what Hong Kong truly is.