Narratives of the Hong Kong Sovereignty Transfer - The Pragmatics of Language Ideology in Taiwanese Chinese English

This comparative analysis of Chinese and Taiwanese English-language press narratives about Hong Kong's handover on 1 July 1997, buttressed by a historical, sociological and political contextualization of the media accounts, shows the power of the pen, generating varying media realities about the same Hong Kong story.

List of contents

INTRODUCTION: Discourse Power and Struggle over Meanings
PART I: Theory and Contextualization of the narratives
Ch1: Theoretical Foundations (Language Pragmatics, Critical Discourse Studies)
Ch 2: Historical Contextualization of the Narratives
From Hong Kong to HKSAR
From ROC to Taiwan
Ch 3: Media Ecologies in Taiwan and China
Ch 4: British, Chinese, and Taiwanese Discourses on the Handover
Ch 5: The Constructed Media Reality (Diverging Media Narratives in the Anglo-
American sphere, the Chinese, Hong Kong and Taiwanese Chinese-language media perspectives)
PART II: Empirical Analysis - Decoding the Kaleidoscope of Meanings
Ch 6: Research Design and Methodology
Ch 7: Findings: Scanning the Spectrum of Narratives (comparative content and discourse analysis of China Post, China News, China Daily: topic salience, actor prominence, ideological meaning generation)
Ch 8: Towards a Theoretical Framework for Studying Chinese Discourses on Identity, Sovereignty and Nation-Building
EPILOGUE: Understanding the Present through the Prism of the Past
APPENDIX: Chronology of Events Leading up to the Handover (1955-1997)
Bibliography
Index

About the author

Lutgard LAMS is Professor of Media Discourse Analysis and Intercultural Communication at KU Leuven Campus Brussels (Belgium), where she heads the Brussels Center for Journalism Studies and the Chinese Discourse Studies workgroup. Using insights from critical discourse analysis and language pragmatics, she explores linguistic aspects of meaning generation in spoken and written journalistic discourse. She has published extensively on media discourses in and about the Chinese region, strategic narratives in political communication, and media framing.

Product details

• Authors: Lutgard Lams, Lams Lutgard
• Publisher: Taylor & Francis Ltd.
• Languages: English
• Product format: Hardback
• Release: 13.11.2025
• EAN: 9781032264004
• ISBN: 978-1-0-3226400-4
• No. of pages: 208
• Series: Routledge Studies in Chinese Discourse Analysis
• Subjects: Education and learning > Adult education/adult education classes > Adult education class / course materials (language); Humanities, art, music > Linguistics and literary studies > General and comparative linguistics; Natural sciences, medicine, IT, technology > Geosciences > Geography; China, Discourse Analysis, LANGUAGE ARTS & DISCIPLINES / Linguistics / Sociolinguistics, LANGUAGE ARTS & DISCIPLINES / Communication Studies, Chinese, Regional Studies, Regional / International studies, Language teaching and learning, Semantics, discourse analysis, stylistics, Language teaching & learning (other than ELT), LANGUAGE STUDY / General, LANGUAGE STUDY / Chinese, Hong Kong;Naratives;Sovereignty;Language