Phoenix W Y Lam
Biographic Data
| ID | 659317 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Phoenix W Y Lam |
| GIVEN NAMES | Phoenix W Y |
| FAMILY NAME | Lam |
| SIGNATURE | LAM P W Y |
| AFFILIATIONS | Hong Kong Polytechnic University |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-8885-1800 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 17 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 25 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 17 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2008 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 3 |
From contrast to communicational practice
Still business as usual? The use of English by language professionals across the government of Hong Kong
202504 bcch
Representations of ‘leftover women’ in the Chinese English-medium newspapers
Previous media studies have largely examined the media construction of ‘leftover women’ in the Chinese-medium news media that are pervaded by patriarchal content. Yet, little attention has been given to the thematic content surrounding leftover women in the Chinese English-medium news media which seem to be more liberal in their stance. To fill this niche, this study employs a key keyword analysis to examine the dominant thematic concepts related…
A multi‐sited analysis of the linguistic landscape of Hong Kong through a center‐periphery approach
Taking a center‐periphery approach, this study is a rare attempt to present a multi‐sited empirical analysis comparing three physically adjacent and connected sites in a town in Hong Kong to explore the interconnectivity, subjectivity, and dynamicity of the landscape. While all three sites can be considered bilingual or even multilingual spaces with the omnipresence of English, there are noticeable differences in terms of how much English there i…
Cross-disciplinary perspectives on research article introductions
In academic writing, stance reporting is used to reflect the position of the writers towards the literature in order to establish the niche and value of the research. Cross-generic and cross-disciplinary studies of reporting verbs have been conducted on hard and soft disciplines, and yet the specific functions of reporting verbs in different sections of an academic genre across disciplines remain unexplored. This study examines and compares the u…
Analysing the functions of online destination forums through a corpus-assisted discourse-analytic approach
Previous research on online travel communication has paid little attention to destination forums, where thousands of travellers worldwide post and view topics related to a place. The present study examines the functions of a destination forum on TripAdvisor. Through the first large-scale corpus-assisted discourse analysis of thousands of topic-initiating posts, this study identifies the functions of the forum, analyses how these functions are rea…
The discursive construction and realization of the Hong Kong brand
Branding is essentially discursive in nature and yet discourse studies of branding are surprisingly few in number. The present study is a rare attempt to examine how branding, in particular place branding, can be conceptualized and operationalized linguistically through the investigation of a corpus of marketing texts on the official branding of Hong Kong. A quantitative analysis using corpus tools and techniques was first conducted to identify t…
Conceptualising the vertical landscape
This article introduces the crucial yet much overlooked dimension of verticality to landscape-related research through a case study of one of the most iconic skyscrapers in Hong Kong, the world's most vertical city. A tripartite analytic model is proposed to examine the dialogical interaction between the discursive and material landscapes in a vertical layout, while at the same time to explore the intricate interrelations among social actors, pra…
Prosody in discourse
Professional e-mail communication in higher education in Hong Kong
E-mail has firmly established itself as a dominant channel of interaction for both social and professional purposes. Despite its importance as a communication tool, the influence of professional roles on discursive practices has yet to be thoroughly addressed, especially when e-mail is specifically used between academics, students, and other relevant stakeholders in the higher education setting, where English is a second or foreign language. Thro…
Western Perceptions of Hong Kong Ten Years On
This article studies the Western perceptions of and relations with Hong Kong a decade after the reversion of the sovereignty from Britain to China in 1997. Previous studies have demonstrated that the West had a significantly negative view on the future of Hong Kong with respect to the handover. According to recent observations, however, the perceptions of the West have undergone a noticeable change. This article aims at investigating the West's u…
Interdiscursivity, hypertextuality, multimodality
Discourse Particles in Corpus Data and Textbooks
Discourse particles are ubiquitous in spoken discourse. Yet despite their pervasiveness very few studies attempt to look at their use in the pedagogical setting. Drawing on data from an intercultural corpus of speech and a textbook database, the present study compares the use of discourse particles by expert users of English in Hong Kong with their descriptions and presentations in textbooks designed for learners of English in the same community.…
Media discourses in Hong Kong
This study examines the change in the representation of human rights issues in a corpus containing over 5,000 articles collected from a leading English newspaper in Hong Kong in two periods before and after the change of sovereignty in 1997 using Sinclair's (Textus 9: 75–106, 1996, Trust the text, Routledge, 2004) lexical item. The analysis of instances of the phrase ‘human rights’ in the corpus as a lexical item shows that the newspaper in quest…
Toward a functional framework for discourse particles
In this paper, a comparison is made between the discourse functions of two of the most frequently occurring and versatile discourse particles in spoken English, namely well and so, to provide an account of the similarities and differences between the uses of the two particles in naturally occurring data. Following a brief introduction which sets the background to the present study, a two-part analysis which contrasts in detail the discourse funct…
The effect of text type on the use of so as a discourse particle
Discourse particles have received a considerable amount of scholarly attention in linguistic research. Although their use in specific text types has been discussed, few studies have actually attempted to look at the effect of text type on their use. Therefore, how the use of discourse particles is related to the situational context in which they are produced remains a largely unexplored area. In this article, the use of one of the most frequently…
Timelines, talk and transcription
Linguists and other social scientists have employed many transcription conventions to exhibit the temporal interleaving of multi-speaker talk. The existence of many different systems, which are mutually incompatible, is evidence that representing spoken discourse remains problematic. This study proposes a novel orthographic transcription layout based on word timings. To test this method, the Maptask corpus (Anderson et al. 1991) is used because i…
Conceptualising the vertical landscape
This article introduces the crucial yet much overlooked dimension of verticality to landscape-related research through a case study of one of the most iconic skyscrapers in Hong Kong, the world's most vertical city. A tripartite analytic model is proposed to examine the dialogical interaction between the discursive and material landscapes in a vertical layout, while at the same time to explore the intricate interrelations among social actors, pra…
Interdiscursivity, hypertextuality, multimodality
A multi‐sited analysis of the linguistic landscape of Hong Kong through a center‐periphery approach
Taking a center‐periphery approach, this study is a rare attempt to present a multi‐sited empirical analysis comparing three physically adjacent and connected sites in a town in Hong Kong to explore the interconnectivity, subjectivity, and dynamicity of the landscape. While all three sites can be considered bilingual or even multilingual spaces with the omnipresence of English, there are noticeable differences in terms of how much English there i…
The effect of text type on the use of so as a discourse particle
Discourse particles have received a considerable amount of scholarly attention in linguistic research. Although their use in specific text types has been discussed, few studies have actually attempted to look at the effect of text type on their use. Therefore, how the use of discourse particles is related to the situational context in which they are produced remains a largely unexplored area. In this article, the use of one of the most frequently…
Timelines, talk and transcription
Linguists and other social scientists have employed many transcription conventions to exhibit the temporal interleaving of multi-speaker talk. The existence of many different systems, which are mutually incompatible, is evidence that representing spoken discourse remains problematic. This study proposes a novel orthographic transcription layout based on word timings. To test this method, the Maptask corpus (Anderson et al. 1991) is used because i…
Timelines, talk and transcription
Linguists and other social scientists have employed many transcription conventions to exhibit the temporal interleaving of multi-speaker talk. The existence of many different systems, which are mutually incompatible, is evidence that representing spoken discourse remains problematic. This study proposes a novel orthographic transcription layout based on word timings. To test this method, the Maptask corpus (Anderson et al. 1991) is used because i…
The effect of text type on the use of so as a discourse particle
Discourse particles have received a considerable amount of scholarly attention in linguistic research. Although their use in specific text types has been discussed, few studies have actually attempted to look at the effect of text type on their use. Therefore, how the use of discourse particles is related to the situational context in which they are produced remains a largely unexplored area. In this article, the use of one of the most frequently…
Discourse Particles in Corpus Data and Textbooks
Discourse particles are ubiquitous in spoken discourse. Yet despite their pervasiveness very few studies attempt to look at their use in the pedagogical setting. Drawing on data from an intercultural corpus of speech and a textbook database, the present study compares the use of discourse particles by expert users of English in Hong Kong with their descriptions and presentations in textbooks designed for learners of English in the same community.…
Media discourses in Hong Kong
This study examines the change in the representation of human rights issues in a corpus containing over 5,000 articles collected from a leading English newspaper in Hong Kong in two periods before and after the change of sovereignty in 1997 using Sinclair's (Textus 9: 75–106, 1996, Trust the text, Routledge, 2004) lexical item. The analysis of instances of the phrase ‘human rights’ in the corpus as a lexical item shows that the newspaper in quest…
Toward a functional framework for discourse particles
In this paper, a comparison is made between the discourse functions of two of the most frequently occurring and versatile discourse particles in spoken English, namely well and so, to provide an account of the similarities and differences between the uses of the two particles in naturally occurring data. Following a brief introduction which sets the background to the present study, a two-part analysis which contrasts in detail the discourse funct…
Western Perceptions of Hong Kong Ten Years On
This article studies the Western perceptions of and relations with Hong Kong a decade after the reversion of the sovereignty from Britain to China in 1997. Previous studies have demonstrated that the West had a significantly negative view on the future of Hong Kong with respect to the handover. According to recent observations, however, the perceptions of the West have undergone a noticeable change. This article aims at investigating the West's u…
Interdiscursivity, hypertextuality, multimodality
Professional e-mail communication in higher education in Hong Kong
E-mail has firmly established itself as a dominant channel of interaction for both social and professional purposes. Despite its importance as a communication tool, the influence of professional roles on discursive practices has yet to be thoroughly addressed, especially when e-mail is specifically used between academics, students, and other relevant stakeholders in the higher education setting, where English is a second or foreign language. Thro…
Prosody in discourse
Conceptualising the vertical landscape
This article introduces the crucial yet much overlooked dimension of verticality to landscape-related research through a case study of one of the most iconic skyscrapers in Hong Kong, the world's most vertical city. A tripartite analytic model is proposed to examine the dialogical interaction between the discursive and material landscapes in a vertical layout, while at the same time to explore the intricate interrelations among social actors, pra…
The discursive construction and realization of the Hong Kong brand
Branding is essentially discursive in nature and yet discourse studies of branding are surprisingly few in number. The present study is a rare attempt to examine how branding, in particular place branding, can be conceptualized and operationalized linguistically through the investigation of a corpus of marketing texts on the official branding of Hong Kong. A quantitative analysis using corpus tools and techniques was first conducted to identify t…
Analysing the functions of online destination forums through a corpus-assisted discourse-analytic approach
Previous research on online travel communication has paid little attention to destination forums, where thousands of travellers worldwide post and view topics related to a place. The present study examines the functions of a destination forum on TripAdvisor. Through the first large-scale corpus-assisted discourse analysis of thousands of topic-initiating posts, this study identifies the functions of the forum, analyses how these functions are rea…
Cross-disciplinary perspectives on research article introductions
In academic writing, stance reporting is used to reflect the position of the writers towards the literature in order to establish the niche and value of the research. Cross-generic and cross-disciplinary studies of reporting verbs have been conducted on hard and soft disciplines, and yet the specific functions of reporting verbs in different sections of an academic genre across disciplines remain unexplored. This study examines and compares the u…
Representations of ‘leftover women’ in the Chinese English-medium newspapers
Previous media studies have largely examined the media construction of ‘leftover women’ in the Chinese-medium news media that are pervaded by patriarchal content. Yet, little attention has been given to the thematic content surrounding leftover women in the Chinese English-medium news media which seem to be more liberal in their stance. To fill this niche, this study employs a key keyword analysis to examine the dominant thematic concepts related…
A multi‐sited analysis of the linguistic landscape of Hong Kong through a center‐periphery approach
Taking a center‐periphery approach, this study is a rare attempt to present a multi‐sited empirical analysis comparing three physically adjacent and connected sites in a town in Hong Kong to explore the interconnectivity, subjectivity, and dynamicity of the landscape. While all three sites can be considered bilingual or even multilingual spaces with the omnipresence of English, there are noticeable differences in terms of how much English there i…
Still business as usual? The use of English by language professionals across the government of Hong Kong
202504 bcch
From contrast to communicational practice
Linguistics (15 works) · Sociology (14 works) · Discourse Analysis in Language Studies (10 works) · Computer Science (8 works) · Discourse analysis (8 works) · Psychology (8 works) · Language, Discourse, Communication Strategies (7 works) · Political science (5 works) · Epistemology (4 works) · Language, Metaphor, and Cognition (4 works)