Linguistic Minorities in Hong Kong 

There are three major limitations:

1. Similarity of interviewees

2. Small sample size

3. Mode of interview

 

(1) Similarity of interviewees

For this group project, the samples, that are our interviewees, are all able to speak or listen in English or Cantonese. As all the members only know mainly Cantonese and English and we do not have the financial ability to employ translators, we could only interview people who are capable of communicating in Cantonese or English, while there are even more linguistic minorities in Hong Kong who only have little knowledge of these two languages. Then, according to the linguistic relativity, the interviewees may have similar thoughts, which are based on the frame provided by Cantonese or English.Therefore, there somehow may be biases in our conclusions due to this similarity among all interviewees.

 

(2) Small sample size

The sample size of this project is only three, and they all have different mother tongues, which affected our conclusion.The conclusion we could deduce is largely base on the replies of our interviewees. But their answers sometimes may be affected by their personal experience or some other reasons. An example for explaining this is the nationalism of Japanese for Ms. Y’s case (Iida, 2002). That they all have different mother tongues is also a matter. It is difficult to identify the actual process of language shift of a specific language happening in Hong Kong.

It is sure that the larger the sample size, the more accurate the result will be. But the sample size is limited by our resources and time. Given the resources and time, our conclusion could be more objective by increasing the sample sizes at the same time maintaining the diversity of the linguistic background of our interviewees.

 

(3) Mode of interview

Another limitation faced in this study was the mode of the interview. Due to clashing schedules within the group and with the interviewees, tête-à-têtes were difficult to organize. Hence, the answers given were not of a controlled quality since follow-up questions or clarifications could not be made vis-à-vis. This gave considerable difficulty in analysing the answers with respect to the 3 central themes explored in this study as the lack of elaborations and details would reduce much of the arguements made in the analysis into mere speculation and guessing. Future studies should adhere to having interviews conducted in person rather than over the internet to ensure the quality of data obtained for analysis.