研究项目

健康观念在全球范围内日益受到重视，尤其在新冠疫情的背景下，不同年龄群体的差异化视角对公共卫生策略产生了显著影响。在香港，老年人普遍青睐的中医强调自然疗法与生活方式的平衡；而青年群体则更倾向于西方健康实践，主张积极活跃的生活方式与定期体检。这些分歧还延伸至疾病管理与公共卫生行为，如对佩戴口罩的态度。 本研究聚焦香港15-25岁与65岁以上两个关键年龄组的健康观念差异。通过探讨代际与文化差异，我们旨在理解社会、历史与技术语境的变迁如何影响健康信念。此类认识对于制定有针对性的公共卫生举措与教育专案至关重要，以契合香港中西融汇的健康实践特色。 我们将采用由香港教育大学开发的“用于收集线上语言资料的数位平台”（DOLD），收集并分析上述年龄群体的个人健康叙事。参与者将分享其关于健康的经验与观点，这些内容将被转化为文本资料，通过语料库辅助话语分析法进行研究。分析将使用 AntConc 等工具开展关键字分析，并探索这些关键字在叙事中如何关联健康认知。我们将运用强化的叙事分析框架，兼顾语料中叙事的形式与功能，并以混合方法对香港不同年龄群体的健康概念进行定量编码与定性解读，从而为更有效的健康传播策略提供依据。 研究的量化部分将检验健康观念差异与年龄、性别、教育水准等人口学因素之间的关联。该方法不仅揭示健康观念的语言框架，也凸显影响不同生命阶段健康观的非语言因素。 通过采用建构主义取向，并聚焦香港青年与老年居民的独特健康视角，本研究弥补了一个重要的研究空白。研究旨在加深对这些人群健康认知的理解，从而优化健康传播策略、支撑政策制定，并提升香港多元文化环境中的健康教育成效。预期成果将提供有价值的见解，助力细化健康策略，以更好满足不同群体的需要。

本项目根植于博物馆面向包容和无障碍的巨变之中。每个展品标签、语音描述、目录、新闻稿和社交媒体贴文不再仅仅是文字，而是创造丰富个人体验的媒介。香港的博物馆已经接纳这种变革的理念，但博物馆文本创作者对于如何撰写能够引起多元观众共鸣的中英双语文本仍存有疑惑。问题还包括缺少对有效的语言工具的了解和缺乏培训材料以培养新一代博物馆撰稿人。 这些实际问题与英语和中文应用语言学研究中的两个缺陷有关：首先，在博物馆语境下，对语言资源的研究几乎未考虑观众接受度。其次，对包容的、无障碍的中文语言资源的关注极其有限。这些尚未解决的缺陷给本项目提供了研究机会和社会影响力，包括为香港的博物馆提供包容和无障碍文本所需的语言工具和见解。 这项调查将专注于一种博物馆文本体裁，即展品标签，因其对参观者的体验至关重要。我们将进行一项接受度的研究，以了解多元观众的心理——是甚么激发了他们的好奇心和参与度——透过调查揭示他们如何看待和接受英语和中文的展品标签。随后，一项语料库辅助话语研究（CADS）将旨在确定与多元参观者偏好相吻合的英语和中文语言资源。最终，接受度研究和CADS将使我们能够确定哪些语言资源最适合观众偏好。我们还将支持中文语言在博物馆中的有效使用，推进有关包容与无障碍的博物馆文本的知识。 本项目的成果将包括一套多功能的培训材料，具有各种益处。短期内，一系列定制的工作坊将提升香港博物馆专业人员撰写具有包容性的文本的技能。我们的合作伙伴将从写作指南的改进中获益，而大学教育者和学生将获得增强写作训练资源。中期内，我们将透过在线课程与本地和国际博物馆分享知识。由此带来的整合包容策略将增强访客的博物馆体验。最终，这将促使更广泛的，语言更包容的社会转变，从而使博物馆参观者和专业人员从中受益。

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.