As an empirical investigation of naturally-occurring self-initiated posts in a destination forum on one of the world’s most popular travel websites Tripadvisor, the present study identifies the key themes in forum posts generated by travelers worldwide about Hong Kong SAR, China (hereafter Hong Kong), one of the world’s most visited city. Incorporating both qualitative and quantitative methodological approaches, it examines the dominant discourses in the forum posts through a combined thematic and keyword corpus analysis. In addition, Bourdieu’s tripartite notion of capital is employed to provide insights into the main resources that travelers to Hong Kong associate with or ask about the city. Four dominant patterns of discourse, namely the discourse of mobility, pleasure seeking, convenience, and budget orientation, have been identified, suggesting that Hong Kong is constructed discursively through its built economic capital in the forum, with little regard for its cultural or social capital. Findings from the study not only provide a window into the qualities, attributes and identities of the city as perceived by the forum users, they also point to the underlying assumptions and expectations that users have about a place, and to the preferences and attitudes which shape the identity of the forum users themselves.

This study provides a rare, updated and focused account of the use of English vis-a-vis Chinese in the public sector of Hong Kong by researching the language use, needs and challenges of a cohort of freshly employed Official Languages Officers working across the government of Hong Kong. Through a mixed-method approach incorporating results from a questionnaire survey, focus-group discussions and case studies, the study has identified the major languages used in governmental workplaces, the most common language-related tasks performed and the languages used for the tasks, and the challenges associated with the tasks. Findings from the present study show that while both Chinese and English are predominant in governmental workplaces, their patterns of use vary according to a number of factors, most notably mode, audience and task type. When performing communicative tasks, these language professionals encounter a diverse and varied range of challenges concerning field knowledge, linguistic competence and personality conflict which apply not only to English but also to Chinese. In sum, while the overall patterns of language use seem to suggest business as usual as it was reported before, there are subtle indications that the institutional and administrative role of English continues to decline in the city's government.

Taking a center-periphery approach, this study is a rare attempt to present a multi-sited empirical analysis comparing three physically adjacent and connected sites in a town in Hong Kong to explore the interconnectivity, subjectivity, and dynamicity of the landscape. While all three sites can be considered bilingual or even multilingual spaces with the omnipresence of English, there are noticeable differences in terms of how much English there is, the physical material and semiotic resources through which English is displayed, and in what forms such English exists. In other words, the three sites differ in the degree, texture and creativity of English through the ways in which physical geography, architectural setting and social actors interact.

Previous media studies have largely examined the media construction of 'leftover women' in the Chinese-medium news media that are pervaded by patriarchal content. Yet, little attention has been given to the thematic content surrounding leftover women in the Chinese English-medium news media which seem to be more liberal in their stance. To fill this niche, this study employs a key keyword analysis to examine the dominant thematic concepts related to leftover women in the Chinese English-medium news media. The findings illustrate that the key keywords in the news reports belong to three thematic categories, namely social actors and attributes, dating activities and relationships, and other social matters. These thematic categories are intertwined with one another to construct the overall representations of leftover women suggesting ideological implications for both patriarchy and egalitarianism. The usefulness of employing corpus techniques to examine overarching themes in gender representations is also highlighted in this study.

In academic writing, stance reporting is used to reflect the position of the writers towards the literature in order to establish the niche and value of the research. Cross-generic and cross-disciplinary studies of reporting verbs have been conducted on hard and soft disciplines, and yet the specific functions of reporting verbs in different sections of an academic genre across disciplines remain unexplored. This study examines and compares the use of reporting verbs in the introduction section of research articles published in high impact journals in the disciplines of psychology, radiology, and linguistics. A combination of the Create-a-Research-Space (CARS) model on analysing research article introductions by Swales and Feak (2004) and a functional taxonomy on reporting verbs by Hyland (2002) has been used to examine discipline-specific stance reporting constructions in the introduction sections of 142 research articles of the three disciplines. Findings suggest that the choice of reporting verbs is not only discipline specific but also depends on the section (and sub-section) in which such reporting verbs are employed.

Multifunctional forms such as so well and like in English are ubiquitous in discourse. In spoken discourse where they are syntactically optional and carry no or little propositional meaning these frequently occurring items are commonly known as discourse markers pragmatic markers or discourse particles and serve a variety of important discourse functions in the textual interpersonal and interactional domains sometimes even concurrently in one instance. While previous studies on these items have provided invaluable insights into their functions and register variation such research work was mostly based on data of native speakers. Much less is known about how and the extent to which non-native speakers use such multifunctional forms. In turn it remains unclear whether these forms constitute part of the pragmatic toolkit for second/foreign language speakers. Drawing on a corpus of spoken English collected in Hong Kong from a range of situational settings the present study investigates and compares the frequencies and functions of the multifunctional form so by Hong Kong Chinese non-native speakers of English and native speakers of English. Findings from the study show similarities in the ratio of the discourse use to propositional use of the word between the two groups of speakers. However discrepancies are observed in the frequency of certain discourse functions by the two groups. These results are considered in relation to such critical issues as linguistic performance pragmatic competence and cultural preference. For language teachers and literacy educators the pedagogical implications of how such comparative findings can be meaningfully deployed to enhance second/foreign language education especially in terms of the pragmatic aspect of communication are discussed.

Through an interdisciplinary approach combining the concepts, methods and tools in language and discourse studies and insights from marketing and tourism research, this book examines the online place branding of Hong Kong, one of the most visited cities and well-known spots in the world. The book compares how the place brand is officially constructed and conveyed by the institutional bodies, as realised on the Brand Hong Kong website online, with how the place brand is publicly experienced and perceived by individuals around the world, as realised on the TripAdvisor Hong Kong travel forum online. The book also includes comparative analysis between Singapore and Hong Kong to provide better understanding of online place branding and findings from the comparative study identify interesting similarities and differences between the official portrayal of the place brand of Hong Kong and its public perception in the digital realm, as well as between Hong Kong and Singapore in online place branding. The book also offers evidence-based suggestions on how we can bridge the gap between the online representation and perception of a place brand and how to enhance online place branding in general.

Previous research on online travel communication has paid little attention to destination forums, where thousands of travellers worldwide post and view topics related to a place. The present study examines the functions of a destination forum on TripAdvisor. Through the first large-scale corpus-assisted discourse analysis of thousands of topic-initiating posts, this study identifies the functions of the forum, analyses how these functions are realised through prominent linguistic and discursive features, and investigates how these functions are performed by members at different levels of contribution and knowledge. The findings show that destination forums are functionally distinct from closely-related online travel texts and from forums in other professional contexts. This demonstrates the need to carry out detailed analyses of actual online travel communication across the spectrum to fully grasp the richness and subtlety of a set of interrelated forms of tourism discourse both as a whole, and as part of the whole.

The growing incidence of mental health problems in adolescents is a significant global concern. School-based counselling, where a student meets with an individual, trained counsellor a number of times in a school setting, is a common component of holistic mental health programmes to support the well-being of students. In Hong Kong, however, professional counselling is in general not well-developed, and school-based counselling has been severely under-researched. Drawing on data from interviews with 8 counsellors and 25 student clients in local secondary schools, the present study aims to investigate the perspectives of counsellors and clients on the practice of school-based counselling in Hong Kong. Following a thematic approach, the study compares the key themes identified in the reflections of counsellors and clients on their experience of counselling. Similarities and differences in the discursive construction and realisation of themes are examined in detail. Representative examples are discussed in context to illustrate the views from both the service providers and users of school-based counselling. Findings from this study will inform and enhance understanding of how school-based counselling can help to promote the mental well-being of students in the local educational setting and in the broader Asian context.