DIGLOSSIA AND MULTILINGUALISM – ISSUES IN LANGUAGE CONTACT AND LANGUAGE SHIFT IN THE CASE OF HONG KONG PRE AND POST- 1997

This paper looks at patterns of language use in Hong Kong around the time of the end of colonial rule by Britain in 1997 to identify some of the issues arising in that context from language contact and language shift. Two different models used in the study of multilingualism or bilingualism will be discussed – language use reflecting function or status (diglossia) and overlapping language forms reflecting linguistic constraints (code-switching). The changes in language use and form in Hong Kong are seen to be more dynamic than traditional models of diglossia or code-switching suggest, which may partly indicate the special history of language contact in Hong Kong, but also may indicate the need for more flexible models of multilingualism.