Cultural Dimensions of Language and Communication

Moved from Shanghai to Hong Kong more than four decades ago, the Poon's family has been staying here for three generations. Shanghainese remains the dominant language in their family conversation.

The informant, Dan Poon, whose mother tongue is Shanghainese, followed his family to Hong Kong when he was in primary school. His parents only speak at first Shanghainese and Mandarin, later on acquired Cantonese after the migration through daily contact with the language. For them, Shanghainese is the preferred language of communication at home, while Cantonese, supplanted with Mandarin, is used in workspace and outside the family circle.

Dan and his sister, Rosette, speak Shanghainese and Mandarin before coming to Hong Kong. Due to the relocation, they learned Cantonese so as to adapt to the life in Hong Kong. English was also taken on as it was the major medium of instruction in education for them. Later, Dan studied abroad in the United States then stayed there for a few years and spoke mainly English during the period. Being more used to Cantonese than their parents, the siblings speak Cantonese to each other more often. Sometimes, they switch among Cantonese, Shanghainese, and English during their conversations. However, Shanghainese remains the lingua franca and dominant language in conversations with other family members. Although he is still a fluent speak of Shanghainese, he finds himself less familiar with the slang terms with the lessened time using the language, if that can be considered the loss or shift within the well maintained tradition in the family.

Dan now works as a gallery director, where his colleagues and client base have diversified language background. Therefore, English is more frequently employed. Dan admits that he finds it easier to explain ideas and terms in English, as it is used in his education from which he acquires the knowledge of art. However, he inclines not to use Shanghainese between clients or acquaintances, even he knows that they are also from Shanghai. Somehow Shanghainese to him is a language that is spoken only with the circle of family members, indicating a sense of intimacy. "When you first talk to the person in Mandarin or English, I think it's a bit unnatural to suddenly switch back to Shanghainese, as that seems to disturb the original momentum of the conversation", he adds that being multilingual enhances freedom in choosing any language from the repertoire instead of being limited to Shanghainese. For example, when communicating with his father, although the conversation is filled with Shanghainese, his father sometimes mixes Mandarin and Cantonese in a sentence.

Dan's nephew, Eric, who is now a university student in Canada, speaks Shanghainese and Cantonese as his mother tongue. Eric's father is a native Cantonese speaker and speaks no Shanghainese. However, Eric keeps a close contact with the Shanghainese side of his family and learned to speak Shanghainese through family gatherings and daily conversation. "We will all speak Shanghainese during family gatherings, except Eric's dad who sits there and cannot understand a word", Dan says. He is proud of Eric being able to speak Shanghainese - the ability that gives Eric an edge in making friends with Shanghainese expatriates and students in Canada.

The proud attitude toward his nephew echoes Dan's utilitarian view in the importance of passing down Shanghainese to the next generation(s). For him, being able to speak Shanghainese just adds an additional skill as if learning any other language. The underlying economic and social resources that are associated to a language can swing the decision of whether to learn Shanghainese. "Of course it will be good to learn another language. However, if my children can't, I don't think there is a loss either, as there are still a lot of big language systems in the world and Shanghainese is just a dialect spoken by people in Shanghai and its surrounding areas", Dan takes a spontaneous view on learning a "dialect", that language maintenance in his family comes just as a natural result of family interaction and habit.