Research Projects

Health concepts have gained global importance, especially highlighted by the COVID-19 pandemic, with distinct perspectives across age groups significantly impacting public health strategies. In Hong Kong, traditional Chinese medicine popular among the elderly emphasizes natural remedies and a balanced lifestyle, whereas the youth are more inclined towards Western practices that advocate for active living and regular medical check-ups. These divergent views extend to illness management and public health behaviors, such as attitudes towards wearing masks. Our study investigates these health concept disparities between two key age groups, 15-25 and over 65, in Hong Kong. By exploring these generational and cultural differences, we aim to understand how changes in social, historical, and technological contexts have influenced health beliefs. This knowledge is crucial for developing targeted public health initiatives and educational programs tailored to the unique East-West blend of health practices in Hong Kong. Utilizing the Digital platform for collecting Online Language Data (DOLD) developed at the Education University of Hong Kong, we will collect and analyze personal health narratives from these age groups. Participants will share their experiences and perspectives on health, which will be transformed into textual data for corpus-assisted discourse analysis. This analysis will employ tools like AntConc to perform keyword analysis and explore how these keywords relate to health perceptions within the narratives. We will employ an enhanced narrative analysis framework that considers both the form and function of narratives within our corpus, using a mixed-methods approach to quantitatively code and qualitatively interpret how different age groups in Hong Kong conceptualize health, thereby informing more effective health communication strategies. The quantitative aspect of our research will examine correlations between health concept variations and demographic factors such as age, gender, and education level. This approach not only highlights the linguistic framing of health concepts but also underscores the extralinguistic factors affecting health views across different life stages. By adopting a constructionist approach and focusing on the distinct health perspectives of younger and older residents in Hong Kong, our study addresses a significant research gap. It aims to enhance understanding of health within these demographic groups, thereby improving health communication, informing policy, and optimizing educational outreach in Hong Kong’s culturally diverse environment. The outcomes are expected to provide valuable insights that will help refine health strategies to better meet the needs of these varied groups.

本項目根植於博物館面向包容和無障礙的巨變之中。每個展品標籤、語音描述、目錄、新聞稿和社交媒體貼文不再僅僅是文字，而是創造豐富個人體驗的媒介。香港的博物館已經接納這種變革的理念，但博物館文本創作者對於如何撰寫能夠引起多元觀眾共鳴的中英雙語文本仍存有疑惑。問題還包括缺少對有效的語言工具的瞭解和缺乏培訓材料以培養新一代博物館撰稿人。 這些實際問題與英語和中文應用語言學研究中的兩個缺陷有關：首先，在博物館語境下，對語言資源的研究幾乎未考慮觀眾接受度。其次，對包容的、無障礙的中文語言資源的關注極其有限。這些尚未解決的缺陷給本項目提供了研究機會和社會影響力，包括為香港的博物館提供包容和無障礙文本所需的語言工具和見解。 這項調查將專注於一種博物館文本體裁，即展品標籤，因其對參觀者的體驗至關重要。我們將進行一項接受度的研究，以了解多元觀眾的心理——是甚麼激發了他們的好奇心和參與度——透過調查揭示他們如何看待和接受英語和中文的展品標籤。隨後，一項語料庫輔助話語研究（CADS）將旨在確定與多元參觀者偏好相吻合的英語和中文語言資源。最終，接受度研究和CADS將使我們能夠確定哪些語言資源最適合觀眾偏好。我們還將支持中文語言在博物館中的有效使用，推進有關包容與無障礙的博物館文本的知識。 本項目的成果將包括一套多功能的培訓材料，具有各種益處。短期內，一系列定製的工作坊將提升香港博物館專業人員撰寫具有包容性的文本的技能。我們的合作夥伴將從寫作指南的改進中獲益，而大學教育者和學生將獲得增強寫作訓練資源。中期內，我們將透過在線課程與本地和國際博物館分享知識。由此帶來的整合包容策略將增強訪客的博物館體驗。最終，這將促使更廣泛的，語言更包容的社會轉變，從而使博物館參觀者和專業人員從中受益。

This project seeks to investigate the relationship between tongue movement and tone in speech production – two parts of articulation formerly considered independent from each other. We look at consonant-vowel coordination in Cantonese and Mandarin, two languages with respectively six and four lexical tones, under different tone and speech rate conditions. Both acoustic (formant) and articulatory (high temporal resolution ultrasound tongue imaging) data will be collected for analysis, followed by analysis-by-synthesis using VocalTractLab. Our findings will shed new lights on (i) our understanding of speech production, (ii) individual differences in articulatory control, and demonstrate (iii) the use of articulatory synthesis as a convenient tool for hypothesis-testing in articulation research.

Empirical corpus-based studies have demonstrated many positive outcomes in learners’ development of various language skills. However, frontline language teachers in primary and secondary schools are unfamiliar with corpus technology, mainly due to the lack of technological, pedagogical and content knowledge (TPACK) training in corpus technology. To address this knowledge gap, we have recently developed a corpus-based language pedagogy (CBLP) that blends language pedagogy with corpus technology. This proposal aims to frame training in corpus technology for student teachers within the TPACK framework to foster CBLP for effective teaching using corpus technology. This research will also provide a theoretical model by investigating how student teachers in Hong Kong and Chinese Mainland receive TPACK training in corpus technology, and how this can influence their self-efficacies for independent language learning and teaching.

The number of people being diagnosed with autism is increasing globally. Healthcare professionals define and categorise autism as a type of mental disorder, and individuals with autism (IWAs) are often perceived as having disabilities. Thus, autism is generally medicalised as an illness. The news media plays a crucial role in shaping the public’s understanding of autism and IWAs. Prior research has suggested that the negative representation and medicalisation of autism in newspapers can cause IWAs to be stigmatised and their mental health to deteriorate.

Despite negative impacts brought by medicalisation, very little research has systematically examined the linguistic construction of the medicalisation in the press. Without this knowledge, we cannot understand whether and how autism and autistic identity is stigmatised in the discourse. Other research gaps are also identified. First, very little research has focused on the Chinese speaking region in which more than 10 million people have been diagnosed with autism. Second, nearly all of the previous studies have used content analyses to examine somewhat small news corpora. The language use in the news portrayal of autism has been overlooked. Moreover, the studies discussed the impacts of the news portrayal about autism without exploring the perceptions of IWAs.

Guided by a social constructionist perspective, the proposed study investigates the news representation of autism in Hong Kong with consideration of the perception of IWAs. Based on a self-compiled corpus containing more than 18000 news articles related to autism, the focal analysis will be a corpus-assisted discourse analysis that combines corpus linguistics and critical discourse analysis to examine how autism is portrayed and medicalised linguistically through the analyses of keywords, word frequency, collocates, N-grams and concordances. Diachronic analyses will be conducted to understand changes of the representations and medicalisation over time (2000-2022). Then semi-structured individual interviews will be conducted with IWAs to explore their perceptions of autism, their autistic identity and the news portrayal of autism. The results of the analyses will be compared empirically to discuss the potential impacts of the news on IWAs and generate implications.

The significance of this project is three-fold. First, it elucidates how portrayals of autism and the medicalisation of autism in Chinese newspapers operate and may stigmatise IWAs from a discourse-analytical perspective. Second, it enhances the public’s understanding of IWAs by eliciting and investigating their voices. Third, it provides practical implications for journalists, researchers, educators, healthcare practitioners, and lawmakers.