Translanguaging as a counterpoint to World Englishes

Abstract

<p>This article examines the emerging register of Kongish by raising two questions. First, in what ways does Kongish distinguish itself from the longstanding variety of Hong Kong English (HKE)? Second, to what extent might Kongish be used as a test case to interrogate the premises of World (or Asian/Postcolonial) Englishes, in which English is the perennial frame of reference in understanding local Anglophone developments across the globe? Drawing on examples from the Facebook page Kongish Daily and text-based commodities from Hong Kong, the article demonstrates that Kongish is a largely uncodified, intrinsically multimodal, and highly experimental urban dialect-in-writing. It belongs to a different order of things than HKE not merely because of its formal features, but because it articulates a nuanced transcultural sensibility and self-reflexive performativity hitherto unseen. Adopting a translanguaging perspective as a counterpoint to the World Englishes paradigm, the article conceptualises Kongish as a heteroglossic semiotic disposition and a creative sociocultural practice that experiments with flexible, always-evolving forms across languages, modes, and media.<br></p>