Campus Digest

English scholar awarded best paper prize by international linguistic body

28 Sep 2016

Dr Robert Fuchs, Research Assistant Professor of the Department of English Language and Literature, recently won the Richard M Hogg Prize of the International Society for the Linguistics of English (ISLE) for his paper “Near-Mergers in Postcolonial Varieties of English – The /v/-/w/ Contrast in Educated Indian English”.

Dr Fuchs is the first scholar from Hong Kong to have received the Richard M Hogg Prize since its establishment in 2008. He said, “I feel honoured to be awarded this prestigious prize and feel that this is also an expression of the increasing relevance of the study of emerging dialects of English around the world. The colonial era has long passed, but English is there to stay in many countries and territories, such as in India and Hong Kong. These emerging dialects are highly contested, most of all locally. Yet I think we can all agree that the social and linguistic context of young Indians and Hong Kong people learning English are quite different from the study of languages such as Japanese and German as a foreign language.”

ISLE offers an annual Richard M Hogg Prize for a paper on any research-related topic in English language or English linguistics by an early-career scholar.