A Comparison of the Semiotic Construction of Hong Kong-style Tea Café in Hong Kong and the UK

Public signs in a tourist destination speak more than the language presents. The Hong Kongstyle café, also known as Cha Chaan Teng in Cantonese, can be found throughout the streets of Hong Kong. With the urban development over the past few decades, Cha Chaan Teng has gradually transformed from a daily eating habit into a vital symbol of Hong Kong culture. However, little is known about the semiotic processes that have accompanied this transformation. This study aims to first conduct an in-depth semiotic landscape study on 8 local Cha Chan Tengs in three different levels (revitalized and modern, natural-like, and economically oriented) in Hong Kong to reveal how this unique Hong Kong cultural label is constructed and how it represents the collective identity of Hong Kong people. With the immigration waves of Hong Kong people in recent years, many Cha Chaan Tengs have emerged outside Hong Kong to provide Hong Kong people with a place to reunite overseas. Therefore, investigating the semiotic landscape of overseas Cha Chaan Teng becomes meaningful. The study then compares the analytical data of local Cha Chaan Tengs with four examples in London and Manchester. By examining their historical development and current situation through semiotic landscape studies, the research reveals how temporal and spatial changes reflect both the transformation of Cha Chaan Teng into a cultural symbol and the wider transformation of Hong Kong society.
This study will adopt research methods from linguistic landscape studies and ethnographic studies, such as digital photography and field notes, to document the semiotic elements of Cha Chaan Teng, including but not limited to menu and signboard design, and all indoor visible inscriptions. The research framework of Geosemiotics proposed by Lou (2017) will be combined with the Ethnography Linguistic Landscape Analysis (ELLA) by Blommaert and Maly (2016) to analyse how the visual semiotics, interaction order and place semiotics of Cha Chaan Teng points out the past, present and future of this unique Hong Kong culture. Significantly, although previous scholars have conducted research on the linguistic landscape in Hong Kong from various perspectives, this will be the first study to use the lens of linguistic landscape studies to compare the Hong Kong-style restaurants in local place and the overseas area. The main objective of my research is to provide a new perspective to the field of sociolinguistics in Hong Kong, and at the same time to raise people’s awareness and knowledge of Cha Chaan Teng – the cultural symbol of Hong Kong with a rich history and social significance, and more importantly, the formation and evolution of Hong Kong collective memory as well as the Hong Kong society.