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

Winnie Cheng, Janet Ho

Research output: Journal article publicationJournal articleAcademic researchpeer-review

13 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 languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)1-14
Number of pages14
JournalJournal of Pragmatics
Volume74
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 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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