The linguistic landscape of Lamma Island

Autoethnography, polycentricity, and the urban-rural nexus in Hong Kong

Authors

  • Jacqueline Marie White Militello The University of Hong Kong Author
  • Andre Joseph Theng The University of Edinburgh Author
  • Yik Lam Charmaine Kong The University of Bern Author
  • Jaspal Naveel Singh The Open University Author

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.1558/sols.24366

Keywords:

polycentricity, autoethnography, linguistic landscapes, urban-rural nexus, Lamma Island, Hong Kong

Abstract

Lamma Island, while only a short 30-minute ferry ride from the intensely metropolitan centre of Hong Kong Island, the ‘most vertical city’ in the world, represents a rural diametric as an ‘outlying island’: lightly populated with both a long-standing local population and a transient ‘expatriate’ population. We argue that the main village Yung Shue Wan represents a ‘border nexus’ between the urban and the rural. This becomes evident through our autoethnographic linguistic landscape (LL) approach, where the four authors use four different positionalities towards understanding how displayed discourse is oriented to multiple centres of authority – that is, the municipal, regional, communal, and touristic – creating Lamma’s unique polycentric sense of place. We show that polycentricity is not only intrinsic to signs but is also contingent on those who read them. We foreground the role of autoethnographic reflexivity in LL analysis, as collaboratively studied via video conferencing tools in light of the pandemic.

Author Biographies

  • Jacqueline Marie White Militello, The University of Hong Kong

    Jacqueline Marie White Militello is an adjunct assistant professor at the University of Hong Kong. She is a sociolinguist using linguistic ethnography to study language and communication in professional settings. She completed her PhD at the University of Hong Kong and King’s College London. She has published on networking, communication during COVID, and linguistic indexing of identity in elite professional settings.

  • Andre Joseph Theng, The University of Edinburgh

    Andre Joseph Theng is a PhD candidate at the University of Edinburgh, United Kingdom. He is broadly interested in sociolinguistics online and offline, religious discourses, and critical dimensions to language in urban contexts. Recent publications include contributions to Signs and Society and Discourse, Context and Media.

  • Yik Lam Charmaine Kong, The University of Bern

    Yik Lam Charmaine Kong is a PhD student at the University of Bern. Her primary research interests are the role language plays in the negotiation of indexical relations, social identities, and power dynamics and revolving around fields including multimodal discourse analysis, media stylistics, semiotic landscapes, and ethnolinguistics.

  • Jaspal Naveel Singh, The Open University

    Jaspal Naveel Singh is a sociolinguistic and linguistic ethnographer currently working as Lecturer in Applied Linguistics and English Language at the Open University, United Kingdom. He previously held academic positions at the University of Hong Kong and Cardiff University in Wales. Jaspal’s ethnographic work has focused on hip hop cultural production among migrant men in Delhi, India. His first monograph Transcultural Voices: Narrating Hip Hop Culture in Complex Delhi, recently published with Multilingual Matters, investigates the construction of many voices (polyphony) in narrative talk and in competitive dance.

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Published

2023-11-17

Issue

Vol. 17 No. 4 (2023): Special Issue: Crossing the urban-rural border: Linguistic landscapes in Asia and Oceania

Section

Articles

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How to Cite

Militello, J. M. W., Theng, A. J., Kong, Y. L. C., & Singh, J. N. (2023). The linguistic landscape of Lamma Island: Autoethnography, polycentricity, and the urban-rural nexus in Hong Kong. Sociolinguistic Studies, 17(4), 377-402. https://doi.org/10.1558/sols.24366

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