201 TESOL QUARTERLY Vol. 32, No. 2, Summer 1998 Attitudes Towards English and Cantonese Among Hong Kong Chinese University Lecturers JOHN FLOWERDEW, DAVID LI, and LINDSAY MILLER City University of Hong Kong This article describes a study that used primarily in-depth interviews to investigate the attitudes of 20 lecturers towards the English medium of instruction policy at a Hong Kong university at the moment of the former British colony’s transition to Chinese sovereignty. The results of the study document the overall attitudes of the lecturers towards the policy, their reasons for supporting it, their problems in applying it, and their reported use of Cantonese to overcome their problems in apply- ing it. The rather ambivalent attitude towards English that the study reveals is seen as indicative of the sociolinguistic tensions within the society at large. The article concludes with a discussion of ways to tackle the perceived problems. I n accordance with the Sino-British Joint Declaration of 1984, since July 1, 1997, the former British colony of Hong Kong has been a Special Administrative Region of the People’s Republic of China, with guarantees of a high degree of autonomy in the running of its affairs and the maintenance of its capitalist way of life and personal freedoms. According to unofficial estimates, the L1 of over 98% of Hong Kong people is Cantonese, a spoken variety of Chinese that differs from the official spoken standard used on the mainland, Putonghua (although Hong Kong and the mainland share the same character-based writing system, Modern Standard Chinese). 1 In spite of the fact that the great majority of its population speaks Cantonese, Hong Kong promotes itself as a bilingual society. 2 English is widely used in business, government, and education and is the language of upward and outward mobility (So, 1 In Hong Kong the traditional character system (with some characters adapted to reflect certain specific features of Cantonese) has been retained whereas the mainland has introduced a system of simplified characters. 2 The official policy is in fact to promote trilingualism (in spoken Cantonese, English, and Putonghua) and biliteracy (in written Chinese and English).