About this Event
Public Lecture: Aggressive Prescriptivism and Language Policing in Post-Digital Hong Kong
Speaker: Carmen Lee, Professor in the Department of English, The Chinese University of Hong Kong
April 24, 2026 (Fri), 4:00PM
Abstract
Public discourse about linguistic correctness and norms has been well documented in sociolinguistics. In the post-digital era, however, metalinguistic commentary circulates rapidly across platforms and media contexts, often marked by intense affect of disdain and moral indignation directed not only at individual speakers but also at the social groups they are assumed to represent. This talk draws on digitally-mediated interaction and interview data from Hong Kong to examine “grassroots aggressive prescriptivism”, the hostile, emotionally charged ways in which ordinary people discuss, police, and condemn the linguistic practices of others. Tracing how such discourse is recontextualized from offline linguistic landscape and media reports to online comment threads and back into everyday life, this talk demonstrates that the affective dimensions of such metalinguistic discourse are not merely expressive of linguistic prejudice. Mediated through platform affordances and polymedia circulation, aggressive prescriptivism emerges as a site of engagement through which collective identities in post-digital Hong Kong are discursively constructed, contested, and renegotiated.
Biography
Carmen Lee is Professor in the Department of English at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, and co‑Editor‑in‑Chief of the journal Discourse, Context & Media. Her research focuses on digital discourse, digital multilingualism, and online verbal aggression. Her recent publications include the second edition of Language Online (Routledge, 2026, with D. Barton) and Doxxing Discourse (CUP, 2026). Her current projects examine the interplay between online and offline linguistic landscapes.
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https://english.hku.hk/event/576/Professor_Carmen_Lee_-_Public_Lecture:_Aggressive_Prescriptivism_and_Language_Policing_in_Post-Digital_Hong_Kong
Event Venue & Nearby Stays
HKU Black Box, Room 54, LG/F, Centennial Campus, HKU, Hong Kong, Hong Kong (SAR)
HKD 0.00
