HOMEKONGERS
ANALYSIS AND FINDINGS
From the interviews, we have found that one of our interviewee, Roka, despite having acquired Nepalese as his first language from his parents and is a native speaker of Nepalese, identify himself as a Hong Konger and thinks that his true mother tongue is Cantonese. Having an education background of being enrolled in a local school taking the HKDSE just like any other Hong Kong children, we hypothesize that language education policy and language contact have greater influence to one’s identity construction than the chronological order of the acquisition of languages and the proficiency of languages.
On the other hand, when we look at the case of Chris and Nandan S who are both non-users of Cantonese, we found that their answers to “ Do you consider yourself as a HongKonger” are the same. Both of them do not speak Cantonese, but identify themselves as Hong Kongers because of reasons including local social circles, a lack of social and psychological connection with their “motherland”, birthplace and nationality. Whilst Nandan S mentioned that her race does pose obstacles for her to be perceived as a Hong Konger, she firmly identifies herself as a Hong Konger.
As it is observed that language does not guarantee great significance in identity construction, we will try to explain such phenomenon through other factors by referring to our interviews.
