Research Projects

Representation is a key concept to cultural studies. Who can be on TV? Do they represent diversity or stereotypes? Why? What will be the consequences? These are questions of aesthetics and politics. This study aims to write a critical history of representation of Chinese mainlanders in Hong Kong TV dramas (HDs, hereafter). From the lazy and imprisoned Ah Chian（阿燦, 《網中人》1979）, to the well-educated and conniving Tian Mi (田蜜, 《不懂撒嬌的女人》2017), mainlander images have become more and more complicated, contingent, and contradictory. This representation has a symbolic power that has contributed to the public imaginations and to practices of Mainland-Hong Kong relations, as well as the Hong Kong identity. Ma (1999) and Gunn (2006) have found a dualism in several pre-1997 HDs: barbarian/civilized, other/us, mainlander/HongKonger, which contributes to constructing a Hong Kong identity. They are illuminating because this dualism continues to appear in post-1997 HDs; but they have not criticized the dark side of it: discrimination and symbolic violence. 

The refugee crisis of the 21st century is one of the most challenging the globe has faced; today more than an estimated 68 million people are displaced from their homes. Postcolonial and diaspora studies have been slow to respond to the need to reconceptualize theories of migration in the context of the new age of migration. The traditional articulations of diasporic identity formation are lacking in theorizing refugee identities characterized by statelessness, violence and precarity. The kinds of transnational affiliations that foster diasporic identity formations are often absent in the case of refugees on the move as are the engendering of hybrid and cosmopolitan identities so celebrated in diaspora studies

Internationalisation is gaining in popularity in higher education. Bilingual programmes where a second language is used as the medium of instruction have thus become increasingly popular. Content and language integrated learning (CLIL) with both content and language having an integrated curricular role is one such programme. There has been fruitful research on CLIL in various contexts in primary and secondary education. However, how to integrate target language support (eg English) with content teaching at university has not featured prominently in research literature. The study will investigate the impact of CLIL on university students’ content and language development in English-medium nursing education. The CLIL pedagogy in the study will draw upon recent theoretical development of translanguaging and trans-semiotising. Results of the study will inform bilingual university education, nursing education and theory and practice of translanguaging and trans-semiotising.

Su Shi is arguably one of imperial China’s most prominent drivers of the trend of amalgamating literature, art and religion, where his contributions have a special place in the history of the wider Sinosphere. Su was demoted and sent into exile in Huangzhou, and it can be argued that during this low period, his attempt to seek solace in tathāgatagarbha thought had a substantial impact on his literary and artistic works. But this Buddhist influence on Su’s compositions has been not sufficiently discussed among the many Song and Qing dynasty periods Chinese criticisms of his work, perhaps in part due to their authors’ strong affiliations with Confucianism. A different perspective of these works, however, can be found in a commentary written in Chinese by the poet-monk Banri Shūkyū, who flourished in Japan during the Muromachi period. Banri’s alternative perspective, presented in his Tenka haku (The Brightest of the World), was informed by his training as a Japanese Zen monk, scholar and poet, his exposure to different traditions of exegesis and training in art and literature, and personal experiences that in some ways echoed with those of Su Shi, including Banri’s experiencing regret and dejection at being compelled, when middle-aged, to renounce his vows and return to lay life.

During two prosperous periods in the Qing Dynasty, the Qianlong and Jiaqing, textual research was prevalent, and textual-research poetry became a widely popular art. The trend of writing textual research poetry arose, and such a trend was sustained for about one hundred years. This kind of poem was based on the textual-research of various cultural relics, which emphasized the selection of materials. Such poems were mostly written in ancient poetry or song style. Scholars of poetry history and criticism often criticized this act of "academic-stuffed poetry," believing that it damaged the image and lyrical characteristics of poetry. Such acts of treating poetry had always been rejected, and such rejection worried those who practised it in such a way that it eventually disappeared in the history of poetry. However, for such a kind of poetry that can flourish for a hundred years, it must have been sustained by various conditions. The grand narrative of poetry history alone cannot reflect its real value. After all, textual-research poetry was considered as cross-genre (Li-E and Hang Shi-jun of Zhejiang school, Weng Fang-gang of Jili school, Yuan Mei and Yang Fang-can of Xingling school), cross-regional (Beijing, Guangzhou, Hangzhou, etc.), cross-class (famous officials such as Wang Chang and Ji Yun, scholars such as Gui Fu and Huang Yi, commoner writers such as Huang Jingren, etc.). The poetry was widely known and distributed. Moreover, textual-research poetry appeared in the Qian-Jia period when the material culture was vibrant, where different "things/objects" contained different meanings in textual-research poems and literary circles. Aimed at examining the relationship between objects, humans, and literature, a new understanding of the value of poetry produced in the Qing Dynasty will become apparent after various research perspectives with specific case studies in this proposed study are completed.

Two problems have remained unresolved in speech prosody research. The first one is that there are numerous rival theories that have coexisted for decades -- supporters for one do not necessarily understand the others well. The second one is that in the absence of a universally accepted framework, field linguists working with a new language could propose prosodic analyses not otherwise satisfactory to fellow researchers, in part also due to field-related practical challenges compared with lab settings. Computational modelling can be a useful tool for addressing these problems. This project seeks to promote computational modeling of fundamental frequency as a tool for (i) theory comparison and (ii) hypothesis testing and analysis *for field linguists*. Here we specifically target linguists without background in computer science or statistics.

Writing from sources is an important academic literacy skill essential for university students to succeed in academia. Nonetheless, because it involves a set of complex cognitive, metacognitive, and self-regulatory processes and strategies, it is extremely challenging. Existing research primarily focused on the cognitive processes of sourcebased writing, adopting qualitative and case-study based methods. While the research generated a nuanced understanding of the intricate mental struggles and issues during the reading-to-write process, it did not investigate the contextual and behavioural aspects of the process, such as the regulation of time, environment and motivation. There is also a paucity of research adopting quantitative means to connect important antecedent, process and outcome variables to generate a comprehensive picture with sufficient clarify to guide practice and further research. The proposed study will attempt to address the above gaps in the literature.

The shakuhachi (尺八), a bamboo flute now considered one of Japan’s representative instruments, came from China in its primitive form in the 8th century (Malm, 2000; Wade, 2005). The Chinese original called the chiba (尺八) has almost disappeared in its birth place, even though other vertical flutes, such as the xiao with a closed mouthpiece and the dong xiao (nan xiao) with a notched mouthpiece, are still popular there (Thrasher, 2008). In the last decade, however, there has been a “revival” of the shakuhachi in China, and an increasing number of Chinese shakuhachi players, teachers, and instrument makers actively offer lessons and concerts. The International Shakuhachi Festival is a quadrennial event that has previously been held in New York, Boulder, Sydney, Kyoto, and London. The next will be in Chaozhou in 2022. Underlying the newly emerging popularity of the shakuhachi in China is a shared narrative among Chinese practitioners: Originating in the Tang dynasty, the shakuhachi has finally returned to its birthplace and is regaining its authenticity as a Chinese instrument. With a sense of nostalgia for the past and responsibility for the future, leading Chinese shakuhachi players are promoting the shakuhachi as a Chinese instrument. The shakuhachi is widely practiced and appreciated outside Japan (Keister, 2004; Matsunobu, 2011; Strothers, 2010). The presence of non-Japanese practitioners is evident in today’s thriving international shakuhachi scene (Smith, 2008). With an expansion of international adherents and the rise of multilingual spaces, the shakuhachi has seen changing boundaries of membership and changing notions of musical identity and musical ownership (Matsunobu, 2009). Previous studies on the internationalization of the shakuhachi have focused predominantly on Westerners’ take up of shakuhachi music and their inclination towards individualized, decontextualized approaches to shakuhachi music (Keister, 2004; Matsunobu, 2009, 2011, 2013). However, little is known about Chinese approaches to shakuhachi music. Compared to Western practitioners, Chinese shakuhachi practitioners have a strong sense of musical identity rooted in Chinese culture. This ethnomusicological study, based on the author’s previous studies of the lived experiences of shakuhachi practitioners in Japan and North America (Matsunobu, 2009, 2011, 2013, 2015), aims to elucidate how the shakuhachi and its music are being taken up, localized, and appropriated in the Chinese context.

A growing body of literature has discovered that the potential of feedback to enhance learning rests upon student feedback literacy. Despite being acknowledged as significant, empirical research on student feedback literacy, especially in L2 writing, is underexplored. Adopting a case study design spanning one academic year, the present study seeks to examine elementary students’ development of student feedback literacy through the use of writing portfolios; how, and to what extent such development of student feedback literacy may influence text revisions and writing improvement; and what the factors are that influence the development of student feedback literacy. The study will contribute to the limited literature on the development of student feedback literacy with the potential to offer pedagogical implications for enhancing students’ feedback literacy, which in turn will encourage greater learner agency and improvement in writing. 

During a panel on comparative literature at the Association for Asian Studies in 1971, Chen Shih-hsiang said that the “Chinese literary tradition as a whole is a lyrical tradition,” offering another perspective for interpreting the tradition. The Chinese lyrical tradition emphasizes expressing deep feelings (or embodying lyricism) in various art forms. Chen’s provocative pronouncement initiated debate within research communities in Greater China. Due to its unique historical background, Hong Kong’s lyrical works, which are different from those of mainland China and Taiwan, have not received the attention they deserve from academia. 

Using a cross-lagged panel design, this study investigates the concurrent and prospective effect of strategy use on CCW performance through two groups of adolescent L2 beginners: 150 non-Chinese ethnic students from local schools in Hong Kong (CSL learners) and 150 students from Vietnam (CFL learners). Quantitative (including descriptive statistics, multiple regression and structural equation modelling) and qualitative analyses are conducted on two sets of longitudinal data, in order to: (i) evaluate the significant effectiveness of strategy use on CCW performance among CSL and CFL students concurrently and overtime; (ii) examine whether the bidirectional relationship of strategy use and CCW performance vary between CSL and CFL; and (iii) depict how context affects the relationship of learning strategies and CCW development among L2 learners. 
This study promises discoveries of significant theoretical and practical potential. It expands the scope of research on skill-specific learning strategies, and connects individual differences and learning settings to explore the underlying factors affecting the CCW component of literacy acquisition. Since effective learning strategies can be taught explicitly, the results of this study have important pedagogical implications in increasing learner autonomy and overcoming the learning difficulties of Chinese L2 learners globally.

From Qingli to Xiling and Yuanfeng (1041-1085), the political and literary reforms happened almost simultaneously. How to explain this phenomenon? The most prominent Wenren of Northern Song were not only literary figures, but also thought leaders of that time. In an era of changes, how did they pass on Siwen through a more comprehensive form of Wen based on their philosophies and set a model for the world? In response to these questions, this research is aims to probe the connections between ‘Wen-Dao’, ‘imperial edicts’, and ‘etiquette’ in the Northern Song Dynasty.

In Hong Kong, multilingualism is prevalent, where citizens have Cantonese as their first language (L1), Mandarin and English as their second (L2) or third language (L3). Previous studies pointed out that the language acquisition of a multilingual is nonlinear and dynamic (Jessner, 2008), and L3 speakers possess a greater repertoire than L2 speakers in terms of cognitive flexibility, phonetic-phonological articulatory, perceptual knowledge and language-learning awareness that helps L3 learners better acquire a new language (Gut, 2009). Regarding the complexity of language teaching and acquisition, this project aims to examine the interaction amongst L1, L2, and L3 and provide in-depth insights for language teachers and learners in Hong Kong and researchers worldwide.

Effective learning of second language (L2) vocabulary hinges on the learners’ ability to self-regulate their learning. However, little research interest has been shown in how students self-regulate when they are left on their own to explore L2 vocabulary learning mediated by mobile technologies. In this research, a self-regulated and personalised (SRP) vocabulary learning approach is developed and its effectiveness measured. This research aims to help students develop a heightened capacity for self-regulation to learn L2 vocabulary with mobile technologies more efficiently and effectively. This research adopts a mixed-method design. An experimental design is adopted to find out to what extent students can learn L2 vocabulary using the SRP approach in a mobile technology-mediated environment via a self-directed intervention for one semester. In addition, a multi-case study will be conducted to provide qualitative evidence to verify whether the self-directed SRP approach can lead to a heightened capacity for self-regulation.

English is stress-timed while Chinese is syllable-timed, which makes English word stress placement difficult for Chinese learners of English. This project aims to develop assessment tasks to identify Chinese learners’ difficulties in English word stress placement in perception and production, design training programmes to examine whether word stress can be acquired systematically, and conduct a teaching experiment to evaluate the effectiveness of the training programmes in facilitating the learning of word stress. This project will generate substantial impact in both theory and practice.

This project seeks to investigate how student teachers are prepared to teach CT in a pre-service language teacher education programme in Hong Kong. Adopting an ethnographic case study design and informed by an ecological perspective on teacher education, the project will explore how student teachers learn to teach CT in relation to their programme coverage, coherence and applicability. The project will also draw on multiple perspectives from language teacher educators and programme leaders/coordinators to discover how CT is integrated with their situated teacher education curricula. Such an ethnographic design not only can contribute to our understanding of CT, but can also generate insights into the dynamic, complex process of teacher learning across different sites, influenced by a range of institutional and socio-cultural factors.

This project responds to the need for research into the teaching of English to young learners (TEYL), defined as children between the ages of 5-12. Despite the significant increase in popularity of TEYL globally, including mainland China, our knowledge of how TEYL is implemented, the attitudes of teachers, and the challenges they face is scant. This project, therefore, addresses this gap in our understanding of English language teaching and learning by exploring the experiences of one group of primary school English teachers in mainland China. A particular contribution of this project is to examine the experiences and perceptions of teachers of English to young learners using the theoretical lens of teacher identity. The results of this project will be of interest to policy makers, teacher educators, school authorities, researchers, and teachers of young learners themselves, both in mainland China and analogous educational settings worldwide.

This oral history project aims to document the voices of Hong Kong leftist film workers who were active from 1949 to 1966 and to utilize their voices to reconstruct Cold War Hong Kong history. The principal investigator adopts the common usage of the term “leftist” during this era, defining leftist film workers as those who worked for the three major leftist film studios and the sole distributor of films made in the People’s Republic of China (PRC). Until the mid-1960s, leftists controlled a significant share of the Hong Kong film market, produced popular movies and exported their productions and PRC-made films to other Chinese communities

“Wig: The Global History of a Cold War Commodity, 1958-1979,” examines Asia’s “miraculous” economic growth under the US Cold War umbrella by tracing the “life” of a strange commodity: the human-hair and synthetic-fiber wig. In the 1960s-70s, wigs became a key Cold War commodity in Asia: the #2 export in South Korea, employing over 40,000 people; the #4 export in Hong Kong, employing 30,000; and a state-supported industry in India and Singapore. By the 1970s, when 40% of US women wore wigs or hairpieces, the wig was a US$1 billion global industry, dominated by Asian wigmakers and Korean-American wig retailers. But while no one intended for wigs to fuel Asian industrialization and globalization, the rise of wigs was not an accident. The wig became a Cold War commodity in 1965, when the US extended its 1950 trade embargo against China to include communist “Asiatic” hair – cutting off China’s US$10 million hair trade to punish its escalation of the Vietnam War. This seemingly minor intervention had major consequences: by restricting trade in communist hair, the embargo devastated Hong Kong’s wig industry (which relied on Chinese hair) and jumpstarted South Korea’s industry (since the ROK harvested its own “anti-communist” hair). And as Asian wigmakers scrambled to find new, ideologically acceptable hair sources, they produced a complex map of the Cold War Asia-Pacific: hair was smuggled from China to Hong Kong through Indonesia, and flown from non-aligned India to US-allied South Korea. Wigs thus reveal how Asian export-led industrialization took shape under and beyond US Cold War influence. This project introduces global and interdisciplinary approaches to studying Cold War history. By examining how wigs moved, we understand Asian growth differently: seeing how Asia’s industrialization was shaped not only by Cold War politico-economics but also by ordinary people, from bureaucrats and factory workers to hair peddlers and wig-wearers. The project thus makes a methodological intervention in two growing fields of history, the history of capitalism and global history, by combining “top down” (diplomatic history, political history, economic history) and “bottom up” (social history, labor history, material culture) approaches, producing a thick, transnational approach to global history. “Wig” will yield a book proposal, conference presentations, a journal article, and a complete book draft. To create impact beyond academia, project findings will be used to produce multilingual global history teaching materials, which will be disseminated locally and through a web site for educators around the world.

Redressing Atrocities: Forms of Reconciliation in Postcolonial Southeast Asian Literature This project offers a critical exposition of reconciliation in postcolonial Southeast Asian literature in English. It considers how literary forms are used as a medium to explore reparative possibilities for past and present conflicts in Southeast Asia. How might we read Anglophone Southeast Asian literature and critically frame the apparent lure of reconciliation for postcolonial Southeast Asia? How do these texts register reparative desires in their literary strategies, narrative shapes, and formal structures? What aesthetic, ethical, and epistemological roles do literary imaginations perform in present-day conflict-ridden spaces around the world? Though reconciliation assumes a prominent status in public discourses and transitional justice mechanisms such as Truth and Reconciliation Commissions globally, it has yet to attain sustained discussion in the literary humanities. This is particularly so in postcolonial critical discourses which have often stressed the ethical value of resistance and viewed reconciliation with suspicion. While some postcolonial scholars have begun to examine the complexity of reconciliation in recent years, they have hitherto tended to overlook the remedial potential of English-language Southeast Asian narratives. As a first attempt to address these critical lacunae, this proposed ECS project seeks to reclaim the vocabulary of reconciliation for postcolonial studies and shift the field’s geographical ambit from the dominant sites of Canada, South Africa, Australia to the often neglected Southeast Asia. In particular, the project examines a corpus of Anglophone Southeast Asian literature on four conflicts: Tan Twan Eng’s novel on the Japanese occupation of Malaya, Viet Thanh Nguyen’s short story collection on the war in Vietnam, Vaddey Ratner’s literary memoir on the Cambodian genocide, and the recent poetry on the Rohingya crisis. This proposed project argues that by addressing atrocities and their aftermaths, the selected postcolonial Southeast Asian texts thematically and formally register an ethics of reconciliation. Such literary expressions seek to redress injustices and repair injured communities within and beyond Southeast Asia, despite the acknowledged enormity, if not impossibility, of the task. Contrary to its often reductive representation in governmental policies and legal avenues, reconciliation as articulated in the selected aesthetic forms captures the paradoxes, partiality, and cultural-historical embeddedness of reparative work. All four cases consider the possibility of reconciliation and the countervailing prospect of irreconcilability. Overall, this project demonstrates that Anglophone Southeast Asian literature makes an important contribution to rethinking reconciliation outside bureaucratic and legal-judicial domains.

Renowned for his work on the dictionary Shuowen Jiezi, Qing philologist Zhu Junsheng (1788—1858) is also author of Liushisi Gua Jingjie, a work generally viewed as a repository of existing interpretations without scholarly innovation and thus largely overlooked. However, to gauge its worth simply on the format presented is to conclude on bias rather than evidence. In fact, on top of being transmissive in nature, Zhu’s work is pivotal and innovative in many ways. It is proposed that the following two areas of Jingjie’s significance will be uncovered: (1)While Jingjie does incorporate a wealth of existing interpretations, Zhu would often present an abridged or restructured extraction, to which his own views are provided. Zhu is also keen on making historical references alongside his interpretations. His historiographical acumen reflects mid-Qing intellectual scholarship, invoking new understandings on astronomy and geography to support his theses, which in turn makes a fresh contribution to classical exegesis. The criticism that Jingjie is “with a clear lack of a critical eye” is an imbalanced assessment. Only through thoroughly understanding how Zhu accepts past scholarship and makes transformative innovations can we observe how new life is breathed into the Chinese classics that has seen continued reinvigoration throughout the ages. (2)It is indisputable that Zhu’s Shuowen Tongxun Dingsheng is his philological magnum opus. However, in evaluating the extent of his achievements, scholars often overlook the philological evidence presented in his other works. It must be acknowledged that Shuowen Jiezi is an analytical dictionary and Zhu’s work on it strives to examine each character’s basic (or definitive) meaning. Whereas the goal of Jingjie is interpret Zhou Yi and its philological exegeses serve such a purpose. It is therefore not surprising to see competing glosses between Zhu’s two works. Only through a systematic examination of Zhu’s philological evidence from Jingjie in contrast with that of Shuowen Tongxun Dingsheng can we observe how his preparatory work for the latter has informed the formation of his understanding of Zhou Yi, and more importantly, how Zhu applies his philological expertise in the interpretive and extended meanings of individual characters found in the Chinese classics. The research output would be pioneering in its evaluation of Zhu’s philological and linguistic achievements outside of the singular source thoroughly examined by other scholars.

This project aims to examine the relationship between IDLE and two dimensions of EIL among Hong Kong university students, who are increasingly experiencing diverse accents among users of English through IDLE activities. Drawing on a sequential explanatory mixed-methods research design, data will be collected from 20 ESL/EFL classes at two universities by means of questionnaires (N = 400), open-ended questions (N = 400), semi-structured interviews (n = 40), and stimulated recalls (n = 40). With an interdisciplinary approach drawing from E-learning, sociolinguistics, and TESOL, theoretically this study can help us better understand and further theorize the way in which informal language practice using technology is related to contemporary students’ perceptions of EIL. Pedagogically, the findings will offer practical insights into how English language teachers can better prepare contemporary English learners for cross-cultural interactions in digital or face-to-face milieus.

The prevalent theory traces the origins of Chinese fiction to the Wei and Jin Dynasties and considers the Tang Dynasty the time when they emerged fully fledged. With the advancement of archaeological works in China, this theory is gradually being challenged by excavated works of fiction dated to the Warring States and the Qin and Han periods. However, questions such as what are the stylistic features of early Chinese fiction and how did the fiction genre developed from that of historical writing remain to be answered. The purpose of this project is to focus on Mutienzi zhuan (The Travels of King Mu) to answer the above questions. As the earliest excavated text that survives into the modern age in Chinese history, our research on Mutienzi zhuan involves multiple aspects. We will start with a textual study of the text from a paleographical perspective, then move on to date its contents by comparing the text against documented bronze sources. The third step is to analyze the stylistic features of Mutienzi zhuan by comparing it with selected early fiction from other cultures, such as The Golden Ass, One Thousand and One Nights, and Mesopotamian mythologies, and to investigate the authorship, readership, transmission, and consumption of early Chinese fiction from a social perspective. The last step is to distinguish between the real and imagined geography in the text and reconstruct the transportation geography of King Mu’s travels using a historical geographical approach. It is hoped that this comprehensive research on Mutienzi zhuan will contribute to the study of Chinese paleography, history, geography and literature.

This project examines an underexplored yet fundamental question in second language (L2) research: when acquiring new speech sounds, do L2 learners draw on knowledge of their first language (L1) phonology sound-by-sound or along some continuous dimension such as length?

Taking phonemic length (i.e. short vs. long sounds) as the test case, we will compare native listeners with different L1 backgrounds producing and perceiving length contrasts in non-native language(s). Their relative performance will answer numerous questions about how L1 transfer occurs.

The findings of the study are expected to have both theoretical and pedagogical implications. At the theoretical level, our findings can lead to a definitive conclusion at the ‘feature vs. category’ dialogue in L2 phonological acquisition. In turn, this will benefit learners of languages where length distinctions matter, such as Japanese. In the long run, our findings can also help teachers devise more effective pedagogical strategies.

The study examines the concurrent and prospective effect of executive functions on the integrated writing (IW) task performance in both Chinese (L1) and English (L2).

The study aims to examine the effects of task characteristics and intersubjective on the patterns of interaction in young non-Chinese speaking students in Hong Kong.