Conceptualizing EDUCATION in Hong Kong and China (1984-2014)

31st Pacific Asia Conference on Language, Information and Computation (PACLIC 31), pages 303–311 Cebu City, Philippines, November 16-18, 2017 Copyright c⃝2017 Kathleen Ahrens and Huiheng Zeng Conceptualizing EDUCATION in Hong Kong and China (1984-2014) Kathleen Ahrens Huiheng Zeng The Hong Kong Polytechnic University The Hong Kong Polytechnic University 11 Yuk Choi Road, Hung Hom, 11 Yuk Choi Road, Hung Hom, Kowloon, Hong Kong Kowloon, Hong Kong kathleen.ahrens@polyu.edu.hk huiheng.zeng@connect.polyu.hk Abstract This study aims to provide an account of metaphor usage in Chinese political rhetoric regarding education over the past thirty years and shed light as to how lexical choices underline and reflect underlying conceptual patterns. Our study shows that the degree of metaphorization of “education” is similar among PRC Premiers while it varies among Hong Kong Governors and Chief Executives. Also, the concept of education in policy addresses in China often relies on the domain of BUILDING, with a focus on ‘structure’ and ‘foundation’ and a secondary focus on the concept of education as ENTERPRISE that can be ‘invested’ in. In contrast, Hong Kong Policy Addresses conceptualize education as a PRODUCT that can be ‘advertised’ or whose ‘quality’ and ‘quantity’ can be ‘improved’. In sum, analyzing metaphor variations in political speeches may reveal how politicians with different backgrounds and from different regions use language to present implicit ideologies. 1 Introduction The last decade has witnessed a growth of research on conceptual metaphors in political discourse (Ahrens, 2009; Ahrens and Lee 2009; Ahrens, 2011; Lu and Ahrens, 2008; Charteris-Black, 2005, 2006, 2009; 2013; Lakoff, 1996, 2004; Musolff, 2004, 2010, 2016). This work may be categorized in terms of authors of the texts and types of source/ target domains being used for analysis. For example, Lu and Ahrens (2008) studied conceptual metaphors with one particular source domain (BUILDING) from Taiwanese presidents, while Charteris-Black (2005) looked at a range of conceptual metaphors from particular British prime ministers and American presidents. In contrast with these examples, this study provides an analysis of the target domain concept of ‘EDUCATION’ in Chinese to see how a target domain is structured by different political leaders at different points in time. To fulfill this goal, two Mandarin Chinese political corpora will be examined in terms of Chinese metaphors related to the target domain of 教育 jiaoyu ‘EDUCATION’. This question of how EDUCATION is conceptualized will be examined by contrasting the keyword-in-context data for ‘education/jiao-yu’ as found in two corpora: the Hong Kong Governor’s Addresses, the Hong Kong (HKSAR) Chief Executive’s Policy Addresses, and the Reports on the Work of the Government by Premiers of the PRC. As Hong Kong has been both a colony of Britain (prior to 1997) and a Special Administrative region of China (since 1997), it has had different education systems. The British system only made education compulsory for those up to the age of 15. While the HKSAR originally followed this scheme, more recently it has moved to make education mandatory until the age of 18, while China continues to make education compulsory for students …

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