Abstract:
Language policy has always been about far more than choosing which
language to use in government, education, or the law. In addition, language
policy involves the use of languages for purposes of cultural governance,
or governmentality. Looking principally at colonial language policy
in Hong Kong, I shall show how language policy was linked to a discursive
construct of Hong Kong Chinese as politically passive (as docile political
bodies), and simultaneously part of an attempt to bring about such docility
through conservative educational curricula (as docile cultural bodies).
I will argue that language policy is a crucial cornerstone of cultural governance
that both reflects and produces constructions of the Other. This
understanding of language policy has significant implications not just for
Hong Kong in the present but for all contexts of language policy.
