Stereotyping with hate speech in online discourses happens everyday. Since "fake ABC" is a newly coined term, there is limited research conducted on this phenomenon. However, researches on other examples of hate speech and identity construction have laid down useful theories that motivated our research. From our literature review, four major concepts are adopted as our theoretical framework.
Social Positioning
Bocholtz and Hall's (2005) defines identity as "the social positioning of self and other."(p. 586) Positioning shows speaker's alignment or disalignment to specific social and cultural ideologies and they specifically highlight the concept of "adequation and distinction" (p. 599). This concept suggests that members of a group are to be positioned as alike so that they could interact with each other, though they do not necessarily position themselves as identical. This will downplay the differences between group members, and allow them to align themselves with a group and another.
To understand social positioning, researchers often look into linguistic features of speakers. For example, Bocholtz and Hall (2005) suggests that indexicality helps to construct identity positions. Indexicality (Silverstein , 1985) creates the semiotic links between linguistic forms and social meanings through index like first-person pronoun I. Other features in linguistic features in online discourses, such as "explicit and implicit juxtaposition with other categories" (Bocholtz and Hall, p. 594) also allow one to explore into one's positioning, social and cultural beliefs.
Drawing from the insight of previous researches, our study will discuss how negative connotations associate with the Hate Speech "Fake ABC" in online discourses through analysing the linguistic features in the comments. We will also explore the positioning of the users in terms of how they position themselves and how they position others.
Social Identity
Online discourses on hate speech can be seen as a way to construct social identity. Identity is closely related to the concept of social positioning. Prejudice and stereotypes, arise as people position themselves and others in salient ways based on sociohistorical context (Kang and Chen, 2014). They are then reinforced through intergroup comparisons (Tajfel and Turner, 1986).
The construction of social identity also links to the question of authenticity. In Cutler's (2003) example of white hip-hoppers' identity discourse, it points out that authenticity should be interpreted in two ways. It relates to the "literal or symbolic proximity" to the community that you feel you belong to and honesty about where one comes from (p. 221).
The concept of social identity could be linked up to our research topic on "Fake ABC". Firstly, in the "fake ABC" debate, in what ways does the social identity suggested by the forum users reflect their social and cultural beliefs? Secondly, how does authenticity issue of "fake ABC" become the major source of conflict and challenge the social identity between the in-group (online forum users) and the out-group (Fake ABC)?
Social Categorisation
Social categorization occurs as one perceives a person to be "a member of a group of people" based on their physical characteristics (Stangor 2000). Thoughts and feelings associated with the category are quickly activated to spread, which may take place without awareness (Bargh, 1994).
Social categorization could be seen in the issue of Fake ABC. For example, the online discourse demonstrates typical perceivable features of "fake ABC" coming into play when users define "Fake ABC" by their salient westernized appearance. Arguably, they categorized the so-called "Fake ABC" socially by their differences with "local Hong Kong style." Similarly, Chen (2008) conducted the research on the linguistic practices of Cantonese English codemixers in Hong Kong by locals and returnnes. It was found that the local code-mixing style is a way to identify and interact with people of shared commonalities. Therefore, code-mixing styles helps distinguishing "outsiders". Similar to "fake ABC", the returness are considered as "pretentious" because of their non-Cantonese accent.
Once people identified different categories, in-group and out-group begin to emerge. Tajfel and Turner (1986) suggest that in-group favourtism are likely to occur as people discriminate against the out-group. Social categorisation allows individuals to understand the social environment. In the "fake ABC" debate, participants try to define "fake ABC" with features like language behaviours. Meanwhile, they also associate their emotions and judgment to both in-group and out-group.
Our research will therefore try to find out the relationship between personal identity and social identity constructed in the online discourse.
Hong Kong Identity
The ideology of Hong Kong identity is crucial since the online discourses about “Fake ABC” draws attention to Hong Kongers' identity as a Hongkonger, a Chinese, or a mixture of both identities. According to Lui (2007), before 1950, there is a little sense of Hong Kong identity mainly due to a lack of border control between Hong Kong and mainland. At that time, for those whose homeland remained in the mainland regard themselves as Chinese while those who resided in Hong Kong see themselves as sojourners. However, after 1950, people who chose to stay in Hong Kong started to think about their root and identity. In the '50s, a major fire broke out in Shek Kip Mei, which urged the British government to launch a public housing program and introduced the idea of "multi story building" for the immigrant population living there. By the idea of “home”, the general identity of “Hong Kong people” started to take shape(Ma, 2005). Most importantly, as agreed by Ma (2005) and Lui (2007), a local TV sit-com “The Good, the Bad and the Ugly” further strengthened the “Hong Kong identity” as an in-group label and stigmatizes the “Mainlanders” (or other nationalities) as out-group.
After the handover of Hong Kong to The People’s Republic of China, the political identity of Hongkonger is settled. Nonetheless, their cultural identity in still "undergoing the process of transformation" (Ma, 2005). During our data collection, negative connotations and interpretations of Hong Kong identity are found in the discussion of "Fake ABC." Online discourses about Hong Kong identity is arguably diversified. Some may argue that Hong Kongers should speak Chinese instead of English. By using "Chinese" instead of Cantonese also represented a lower level of in-groupness in the minds of some netizens. Hence, in our research, the interpretations of Hong Kong identity will also be investigated and digged into.