National Language: National Identity

Language has become one of the most important cognitive faculty since it is the most fundamental mechanism which human can share information, express their thoughts and values to each other. Besides, it is also an indicator of every ethnic group which shows its unique culture. One’s national identity is associated with languages, ethnicity, political system and religious etc. The language inheritance which is associated to the language identity (Block, 2009) makes correlation with national identity. The purpose of writing this essay is to bring out whether a common national language can enhance the development of a desired national identity or not. The common language ensures everyone communicates smoothly and reduces the linguistic conflicts

Let’s take Hong Kong as an example. After the sovereignty of Hong Kong was returned from Britain to China in on 1 July 1997, Hong Kong became a territory of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) in which Hong Kong can enjoy the status of “Special Administrative Region’ (SAR). In 1949, due to the political change in China, the free and regular movement between Hong Kong and China was not approved. It was much difficult for people to return to their ancestral homes in China while simultaneously there were many illegal immigrants escaping to Hong Kong. Consequently, it made these groups of people identified Hong Kong as their new home in long term (Lau 1997). Hong Kong culture and identity quite difference from that of Mainland China was built during the 1960s and 1970s . Hong Kong is capitalist society, western-impacted and urbanized. The new identity recognition becomes the increasing characteristic among the majority of young population, especially those born in Hong Kong who enjoy better paid in employment and who are with higher education background. From the time go on, there was a clear sense for those group of people to identify themselves as “Hongkongese” rather than Chinese (Lau and Kuan, 1995). Besides, because of the geographical location of Hong Kong, it is quite close to the province of Canton, those escaped and then settled in Hong Kong largely came from the Canton province and were native speaker of Cantonese. Hence, Cantonese was naturally developed as a lingua franca. During the twentieth century, people accounted for as much as 98 per cent of the total population in Hong Kong were proficiency in Cantonese. The new Hong Kong identity was dominated by Cantonese. Cantonese was used on all of the major forms of expression, such as film, pop music, speech and daily communications and interactions and the medium of instruction in