linguistics & literature

The task of literature is to reconnect us with feelings that might otherwise be unbearable to study, but which desperately need our attention.

Over summer 2024 I joined a linguistics research project at CUHK’s Faculty of Arts, on the distribution of the /r/ phoneme across Hong Kong (replicating Labov’s fourth-floor experiment). I mainly helped with designing questions and data analysis. We found that higher-class speakers tended to pronounce their /r/s more.

I thought this could be due to two reasons. First, rhoticity is not phonotactically present in Cantonese, and so locals who are not fluent in English (and thus likely from lower-class backgrounds) would be unable to pronounce /r/. In turn, non-rhoticity is associated with the lower class, and so higher-class speakers would exhibit their /r/s to show their education. Second, AmEng is increasingly becoming the prestige dialect instead of RP in Hong Kong, a former British colony. The pervasiveness of American media (e.g., YouTube) may mean AmEng is now associated with ‘trendiness’ and ‘informality’ whereas RP is thought of as ‘tedious’ and ‘old’.

Overall, this was pretty fun, and a good excuse to learn some data science.

achievements

positions

others

*Awarded to the top 6 participants in the nation. Recipients were invited to attend a four-day intensivee training camp at Magdalen College, University of Oxford.

**Declined to participate due to visa issues.