Cultural Conceptualizations of the SELF in Hong Kong English

This monograph offers a cultural-cognitive approach to the study of identity construction at a cultural group level and how it patterns language, exemplified with Hong Kong English. For this, cultural values, political ideology, language models, and reported self- and other-perception as constitutive elements of the speech community’s cultural cognition are explored for the understanding of the cultural model of the SELF. Rooted in the disciplinary synthesis of Cultural Linguistics and World Englishes and its corpus-based approach, this book offers new applications and methodological extensions in the study of the acculturation processes of Englishes around the world and the cognitive substrates that inform them. The present study showcases that human experience is fundamentally cultural. Hence, this book will enlighten anyone interested in the workings of cognition as connected to language and culture, i.e., researchers and students working in the fields of Cultural Linguistics, Cognitive Linguistics, World Englishes, (linguistic) anthropology, critical discourse analysis, social science, sociolinguistics, cultural studies, and political science.

• Publication date: 16 September 2025
• Page count: 289
• Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing Co
• Format: Hardback
• ISBN-13: 9789027228574