In this chapter, I shall mainly report on a study of mobile phone voice communication by a group of people in Hong Kong, as a way of giving us an insight into the way the mobile phone, which has become one of the most important CMC tools of our time, is being used. I shall draw in background information, data, questionnaire, analysis, and activities from a funded research project which was indeed one of the first projects in Hong Kong, if not worldwide, dedicated to understanding the way language is used through the medium of mobile phone communication.1
The mobile phone is one of the most revolutionary tools or media of communication in recent times. The pervasive use of mobile phones in society may be the basis of new ways of using language in phone conversations. Mobile phone usage in Hong Kong began in the late 1980s. Since the mid-1990s, the penetration rate has grown enormously as more service providers joined the market, thus leading to lower service charges2. For instance, the penetration rate has increased from 20% in 1997 to 80% in 2001. In addition, a report in as early as March 2002 even shows that approximately 98% of people aged 20 to 29 in Hong Kong owned a mobile phone3. In Asia, Hong Kong has the highest levels of personal penetration of mobile telephones and has maintained that position over years (ACNielsen, 2001)
In this case study of mobile phone voice communication, I focus on the use of ‘Mobile phone Cantonese’ in Hong Kong, which refers to a set of distinctive forms of Cantonese expressions that are associated with communication through the mobile phone. It shares features of general telephone language, but some are distinctive or have different degrees of occurrence.
As part of the research project on mobile phones mentioned above, an informal study was carried out among students in a Language and Literacy class taught by the author in order to observe the structure of mobile phone Cantonese, and most common used phrases.
This preliminary survey further obtained initial findings on some linguistic features of mobile phone communication (MPC henceforth), and some general habits and practices of MPC in Hong Kong. The survey took place on February 28, 2002. In this survey, questionnaires were administered to a class of 17 university students. The following outlines the findings of the case study.