Brainwashing or nurturing positive values: Competing voices in Hong Kong's national education debate

Winnie Cheng; Janet Ho

doi:10.1016/j.pragma.2014.08.006

Brainwashing or nurturing positive values: Competing voices in Hong Kong's national education debate

Winnie Cheng, Janet Ho

Research output: Journal article publication › Journal article › Academic research › peer-review

10 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

This corpus-based discourse analytical study compares the use of collocations, semantic preferences, semantic prosodies and metaphors in the news reports and Hong Kong Government press releases concerning the introduction of the school subject Moral and National Education in Hong Kong in 2012. The analysis of word co-occurrences with the phrase 'national education' in the two corpora shows that journalists use various FIGHT metaphors to describe the attitudes and actions of protesters and the responses of the government. However, the government press releases are much more literal, showing a neutral to positive tone and implying that when the planned introduction was shelved, national education will be re-introduced in the future.

Original language	English
Pages (from-to)	1-14
Number of pages	14
Journal	Journal of Pragmatics
Volume	74
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pragma.2014.08.006
Publication status	Published - 1 Dec 2014

Keywords

Media reports and press releases
Metaphors
Moral and national education
Semantic preferences and prosodies
The fight metaphor

ASJC Scopus subject areas

Language and Linguistics
Linguistics and Language
Artificial Intelligence

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10.1016/j.pragma.2014.08.006

Cite this

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AB - This corpus-based discourse analytical study compares the use of collocations, semantic preferences, semantic prosodies and metaphors in the news reports and Hong Kong Government press releases concerning the introduction of the school subject Moral and National Education in Hong Kong in 2012. The analysis of word co-occurrences with the phrase 'national education' in the two corpora shows that journalists use various FIGHT metaphors to describe the attitudes and actions of protesters and the responses of the government. However, the government press releases are much more literal, showing a neutral to positive tone and implying that when the planned introduction was shelved, national education will be re-introduced in the future.

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Brainwashing or nurturing positive values: Competing voices in Hong Kong's national education debate

Abstract

Keywords

ASJC Scopus subject areas

More information

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