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The Linguistics Journal – September 2009 label their identity since 1997, they only described how, in general, HK people label themselves but have not examined how specific reasons influence HK people’s decisions about national identity labeling, or the development of national identity change of a particular group of HK people. Similar studies examining similar topics also share the same research gap. One example is Maramba’s (2008) work. She investigated how Filipino American students negotiated their home environment and university experience in the States (for similar studies, see Pyvis and Chapman, 2007). Because of the limited work examining how a particular group of HK people have their national identity changed because of international education, I attempt to explore the frame of reference of three international students from HK; how they had their national identity imagined, negotiated through various identity positions and altered after returning to Hong Kong. 2. Terminological Issues In this paper, “national identity” is discussed. Smith (1991) claimed that identity reveals “who one is” and serves as the root of behaviours and actions of individuals. Individual identity is made up of a series of social roles and cultural categories. Self is composed of multiple identities and roles like familial, territorial, class, religious, ethnic and gender. However, using “identity” as a general term to describe “who one is” is far from satisfactory as identity has multiple interrelated facets. When talking about “national identity”, it inevitably associates with “nationality” and “nation”. The term “nationality” is problematic in nature. The legal sense of nationality refers to citizenship. Meanwhile, nationality can also mean membership in a cultural/historical group related to political or national identity, even if it lacks a formal state, for example the Kurds, Welsh, Scots, Tamils and so on. As nation can be a human, cultural, or a social community, it may be considered as an “imagined community”-- a concept coined by Anderson (2006) which can be seen as a form of social construction. The Linguistics Journal – Special Edition Page 38
The Linguistics Journal – September 2009 Also, Hobsbawm (1990) pointed out that the nation was the product of nationalism. A nation is created by the unification of various people into a common society or community. Because of the dispute over “nation” and “nationality”, the debate over national identity is therefore inevitable. Smith (1991) provided the most comprehensive definition for national identity. He concluded that national identity and nations are complex constructs composed of a number of interrelated components—ethnic, cultural, territorial, economic and legal-political. Because the focus of this paper is on overseas students’ national identity change in a post-colonial period in respect to a specific political situation, this paper adopts the construct of national identity composed of cultural, territorial and legal- political components. 3. Review of Literature There have been studies about the uniqueness of HK identity since the Sino-British Joint Declaration in 1984 (Bong, 1988, 1993). The period of transition provided an opportunity to carve out a distinctive social identity associated with being both Chinese and Hong Kong. Fu, et al’s (1999) study found that people in HK had their perceptions altered towards their HK identity when there was contextual change in society. This is in accord with Turner’s self-categorisation theory (Turner, Hogg, Oakes, Reicher & Wetherell, 1987). When a minority group of people were situated next to a mainstream culture, they started to reflect and self-categorise their identity according to the differences between their own and that of the mainstream culture. Brewer (1991) also suggested that changes in one’s identity are context- specific. However, these theories and studies only investigated how national identity was associated with general social contexts, no specific social reasons had been identified. Even with studies conducted in the The Linguistics Journal – Special Edition Page 39
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