Resumen de Kongish Daily: researching translanguaging creativity and subversiveness

Li Wei, Alfred Tsang, Nick Wong, Pedro Lok

• This paper analyses Kongish Daily, a Facebook page that trans-scripts local news in Hong Kong into a creative and dynamic mix of Cantonese in traditional Chinese characters, Romanisation and made-up characters, simplified Chinese, pinyin, English, Hong Kong English, other phonetic symbols, emoji and other signs and images. We trace the origin of the site and rationale for the Facebook page, and analyse it as a translanguaging phenomenon. The main objective is to understand the political motivations for the Facebook account and the social critique it offers through its dynamic translanguaging practice. In particular, we want to highlight the subversive nature of the translanguaging practice. Methodologically, it develops the participatory linguistics framework, which transformed our own understandings of the phenomenon as well as the cultural politics of translingualism and social media in Hong Kong.