Understanding the Hong Kong Umbrella Movement: A critical discourse historiographical approach

Introduction

In recent years, there has been a proliferation of mass demonstrations where individuals come together to take over public spaces and protest again governments which are seen as corrupt and/or authoritarian and to exert pressure for change. Many of these movements are recognised by a colour or flower. Thus there was the Green Revolution in Iran in 2009, the Jasmine Revolution in Tunisia in 2010, the Lotus Revolution in Egypt in 2011 and the Sunflower Revolution in Taiwan in 2014. Although these movements are labelled ‘revolutions’, in many cases they do not seek to totally overthrow a regime (and they do not set out to be violent), but to bring about democratic reforms. They are thus better labelled social movements rather than revolutions. Included with these movements can be Occupy movements: movements inspired by Occupy Wall Street, which was itself inspired by some of the movements just referred to, and which sought to protest against social and economic inequality (see Martín Rojo, 2014 for a collection of articles on various Occupy movements from a discourse perspective). In 2014 an Occupy movement developed in Hong Kong (HK), a movement which had a more specific political goal than other Occupies, and which is the focus of this article. The full title of this movement was Occupy Central with Peace and Love, but it also came to be known as the Umbrella Movement because of the (often yellow) umbrellas used by protestors to protect themselves against police pepper spray. ¹ Reflective of its title, this article seeks to find answers to the question as to how to understand the HK Umbrella Movement as a discursive event. ² An event is something that has a beginning and an end and takes place through time. A discursive event is by extension an event that has a discursive element (Foucault, 1970), but the term discursive here refers to all aspects of semiosis, not just speech and writing; it includes any activity or process that involves signs, and which creates meaning, including gesture, images, film, the Internet and multimedia (Wodak and Meyer, 2015: 2), and, in the case of Occupy movements, I might add, bodies. This allows Occupy movements to be considered as discursive events. We may also talk of macro and micro discursive events. Macro events, such as HK and other Occupies, have beginnings and ends, but these macro events are made up of smaller elements, such as separate marches, speeches and struggles with the police that also have boundaries which mark them off, while at the same time forming a part of the larger event.

This article will invoke a range of theories to come up with explanations of why and how this important event in HK’s evolving socio-political identity occurred. The article will be grounded in the author’s historiographical approach to discourse (Flowerdew, 2012) and will invoke theories of social movements, performance, identity and social action as text. The findings will contribute to my ongoing discourse historiography of transitional HK. The study is emblematic of a problem-driven, multiple approach to sociolinguistic research. The approach and theories applied, it is argued, may be useful in the consideration of other social movements globally.

The Occupy event

The HK Umbrella Movement developed in response to intervention in HK political affairs by the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress (NPCSC) of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) (see later on the historiographical background) and their decision to place restrictions on who could stand for election for HK’s Chief Executive, who was due to be elected by universal suffrage in 2017. Demonstrations began outside the HK Government headquarters in Admiralty and protestors occupied several major city intersections, spreading to two other major locations in Mongkok and Causeway Bay. Police tactics to control the protestors involved the use of batons, pepper spray and, on one occasion, tear gas. The protests went on for 97 days and the number of protesters peaked at more than 100,000 at any given time, on occasions overwhelming the police and thereby causing ‘containment errors’.

The movement developed as a non-centralised, self-managed, horizontal organisation and became known as the Umbrella Movement, after the (usually yellow) umbrellas used by the Occupiers to defend themselves against the pepper spray and batons of the police when they intervened against them. The occupation had many of the features of other Occupy movements elsewhere, with encampments of tents built behind street barricades and various support facilities, such as first-aid posts, canteens, religious shrines, study areas and artwork. Activities included speeches, debates, songs and various carnivalesque activities. Support facilities ensured that the areas were kept clean and orderly and that the Occupiers were provided with food and other necessities. As in other Occupy movements, social media played an important role (Jones and Li, 2016; articles in Martín Rojo, 2014), Occupiers being quickly able to mobilise when there was any threat from the police or anti-Occupy demonstrators, of whom large numbers developed, labelling themselves as ‘the silent majority’ or the ‘blue ribbon’ movement, in opposition to the yellow ribbons worn by the Occupiers, and reflecting the colour of the police uniforms. The Occupiers’ main demand was for the NPCSC decision to be revoked and to allow a fully fledged universal suffrage system for the Chief Executive in 2017 to be implemented. However, the movement was also underpinned by other forms of dissatisfaction, such as the high price of property, the low pay structure of the job market and government collusion with big business (most notably property developers), features shared with other Occupy movements elsewhere (Ng, 2016). Particular to the HK movement, however, was a search for a HK identity in the face of not only Mainland control of the political arena, but also Mainlanders challenging locals for property, public services and basic goods such as baby milk formula and Mainland visitors creating overcrowding in public transport and shopping areas. Another demand of the Occupiers was that C.Y. Leung, the Chief Executive, should step down.

The movement was for the most part peaceful and orderly, although there were clashes with the police and accusations of police violence. The occupation of the urban spaces by the protesters, with their horizontal organisation and their ‘engaging in the spatial practices of everyday living: singing, talking, arguing, eating, drinking, urinating, defecating, having sex, and so on’, as Chun (2014: 655) has written of L.A. Occupy, can be seen as a reflection of the sort of society the Occupiers wanted to see. As Chun (2014) has written, again,

[i]n their calls for a more equitable and socially just society, the Occupiers were doing just this – creating and producing a new space within and on top of an existing space having its own discourses of institutional power and control, leading to complex layers of competing and contesting ‘discourses in place’ (Scollon and Scollon, 2003). (Chun, 2014: 655–656)

Historiographical approach

Many discourse theorists emphasise the historical dimension of discourse in the interpretive process (Achugar, 2008, 2017; Blommaert, 2005; Fairclough, 1992; Wodak, 2006). Clearly, to understand any event, action or situation, one needs to know something about what led up to it. Wodak’s discourse historical approach (Wodak et al., 2009) puts particular emphasis on history, as does my own historiographical approach, which, in addition to emphasising the important role of the historical context in the interpretation of discourse, also argues that a diachronic, historiographical approach can make a contribution to historiography, the writing of history, in so far as it can create first readings and interpretations of important events. ³ In my previous work on HK socio-political discourse, starting from 1990, I have adopted this approach. The historiographical approach involves a diachronic analysis, thereby allowing for an understanding of what changes over time and what stays the same, the assumption being that an understanding of discourses of the more distant and the more immediate past allows for a better understanding of discourses of the present (and, indeed, potentially of the future). So the term ‘historical’ as far as a critical discourse historiographical (CDH) approach is concerned does not refer to the study of historical texts (although such a focus can inform a CDH study, as just mentioned and elaborated further later, and is in fact a necessary part of the social context), or the study of contested discourses about the past (although again, this can be the focus of a CDH study; e.g. Flowerdew, 1997, 1998; Verdoolaege, 2008; Wodak and Richardson, 2013), but rather refers to the role that the study of present-day discourses can play in the writing of history, in historiography. The historiographical approach thus focuses on case studies of contemporary discursive events considered as ‘critical moments’ that are indicative of more broadly based developments in discourse and society. In this regard the HK Umbrella Movement clearly qualifies as a critical moment. As such, the historiographical approach can accommodate other social and discourse theories and, by doing so, carries with it an element of triangulation, of both theory and method. Furthermore, in focusing on critical moments, the historiographical approach is critical in the sense of the term as it is applied in critical discourse studies (CDS), in that it seeks to uncover hidden discourse dimensions of injustice, inequality and other forms of social and political problems (e.g. Van Dijk, 1993).

In line with Fairclough’s (1992) conception of the relation between discourse and social change, the approach recognises three interactive levels: the socio-historical context as it relates to the discursive practices and text(s) under consideration; the discursive practice/events being considered, that is, how the production of semiotic practices is situated in a concrete time and place, produced by specific participants, and framed in a particular kind of communicative event (assemblies, demonstrations, interactions in the streets, singing); and the texts themselves (text here being understood as any semiotic message). This approach means that macro and textual elements/data cannot be connected in a simplistic manner. It is necessary to understand the production of individual texts in particular sites and how this production and circulation takes place and is regulated, by whom and in what way. This again means that the historical context of a discourse is very important for its analysis. Fairclough’s tripartite model also means that individuals can be thought of as not only conditioned by social structures, but also possessing their own agency (Achugar, 2017).

Data and method

As already indicated, my study of Occupy is part of my ongoing research on HK socio-political discourse, which started in 1990, before the change of sovereignty in 1997, and which I have conducted using various discourse analytic methods in the broad framework of a critical discourse analytic, historiographical approach. With regard specifically to Occupy, as a permanent HK resident I was exposed to the events as reported in the digital and print media on a daily basis and created a digital and print corpus of news articles I felt to be relevant. I watched events as they were broadcast and discussed on television and the Internet. In addition, many of my students and some of my colleagues were active participants in Occupy and were able to inform me of what was happening. Furthermore, I made repeated visits to the various sites at various times of the day and night to observe at first hand, take photographs and talk to participants. This observation spanned the period of September–December 2014 and visits were made on average at least once a week, but more frequently at certain times when there was a lot of activity. During these visits detailed field notes were made, photographs were taken of people, artefacts and displayed messages (written and visual), and various discursive events were observed: demonstrations, speeches, arguments, singing, praying and the use of mobile phones for virtual exchanges. Interviews were conducted opportunistically, as and when participants demonstrated their willingness to talk. Discussions were also held at my university campus with my students, some of whom were participating in Occupy.

As can be seen from the above, the study uses ethnographic methods. As such, it involves prolonged engagement with the event and participants in focus and seeks to describe how the participants describe and structure their world (Creswell, 1994). At the same time, this in-depth and extended experience enhances my sensitivity to and understanding of the issues at stake. Furthermore, my analysis is informed by my study of HK politics (from a discourse perspective) since the early 1990s (see e.g. Flowerdew, 1998, 2014). Participant and non-participant observation may be intrusive. However, in the case of this study, because the Occupiers were keen to get their message out, they volunteered their views and understanding of the situation freely. In order to maintain as objective a stance as possible, I kept a diary alongside the data I was collecting to understand what I was thinking and feeling at the time and to assist with my ongoing analysis (which in this type of research is ongoing and runs parallel to data collection; Miles and Huberman, 1984). To further demonstrate internal validity, this study presents copious examples from the data (word length permitting) so that an authentic picture of the Occupy movement can be built up and to get a clear sense of the concrete events taking place through the Occupy movement in HK, and of how the data support my theoretical and methodological claims. Given that I am a linguist, my approach to analysis is influenced by my work in discourse analysis and there is a heightened attention to texts (understood broadly to include all semiotic systems, as already mentioned); methods of critical discourse analysis are also employed (Wodak and Meyer, 2015).

As already indicated, my approach to this study will be historiographical, but within that approach I will apply a range of theories which can be applied to discourse: namely, social movement theory, performance theory, identity theory and social action as text theory. By using such a triangulated approach, I hope to apply multiple perspectives on the theme of the article, understanding the HK Umbrella Movement.

The historical background

The historical background to the unfolding of the HK Umbrella Movement event can only be briefly outlined in the space of a journal article (but see also Author, 1998, 2012). Hong Kong Island was seized from Imperial China by Great Britain in 1842, the Kowloon Peninsula was ceded to Britain in 1860 and the New Territories came under British control according to a 99-year lease up until 1997. These three areas together came to be known as the British colony of HK. However, with the lease on the New Territories due to expire in 1997, the British and Chinese governments agreed in 1984 that the whole of HK should revert to Chinese sovereignty in that year, according to the terms of a jointly negotiated Sino–British Joint Declaration. In line with the terms of the Joint Declaration and the subsequent Basic Law, a document based on the Joint Declaration, but drawn up by China, with input from local HK participants, HK was to be a Special Administrative Region (SAR) of the PRC with a high degree of autonomy and its own system of gradually developing democratic government, the PRC being responsible only for defence and foreign affairs. The arrangement was dubbed by Chinese leader Deng Xiao Ping as ‘one country, two systems’ and is due to last for 50 years.

Following the reversion of sovereignty, HK’s Chief Executive has been elected by a committee for a period of 5 years. Since the first selection process in 1997, when there were 400 members appointed to this committee, the size of the committee has gradually expanded until for the most recent election before the Umbrella movement, in 2012, there were 2012 members. The membership of the committee is effectively controlled by Beijing and the candidate preferred by Beijing is assured of election. The Basic Law, however, states that the Chief Executive should ultimately be elected by ‘universal suffrage upon nomination by a broadly representative nominating committee in accordance with democratic procedures’. In 2007, the NPCSC of the PRC agreed that this would take place in 2017. However, in August 2014 that same committee set out new regulations for the nomination of the candidates, which would allow Beijing to retain control of who would be allowed to stand for election (there would be a maximum of three candidates).

Anticipating some such intervention, in January 2013 a law professor at the University of Hong Kong, Benny Tai Yiu-ting, put forward the idea of a civil disobedience movement, Occupy Central with Love and Peace, in which members of the public would (peacefully, but illegally) occupy and paralyse the Central business district of HK in order to try to persuade Beijing to allow for a truly democratic election of the Chief Executive. Tai was joined by a sociology professor, Chan Kin-man, and a Christian minister, Chu Yiu-ming, to lead the movement and gather support. However, on 22 September, before Occupy was implemented, another group – Scholarism, led by the Hong Kong Federation of Students – began a class boycott and sit-in outside the government offices in Admiralty, in protest at the National People’s Congress (NPC) decision. This group effectively pre-empted Occupy, which was subsequently started, leading to a large-scale occupation. On 28 September, evoking memories of the 4 June 1989 incident in Tiananmen Square, riot police fired 87 rounds of tear gas and used pepper spray against the protesters. This only created further support for the Occupiers and the occupation spread to two other areas, Mongkok and Causeway Bay.

Following the tear gas incident, the authorities realised that this was a counter-productive policy and reverted to a more hands-off approach, allowing the Occupiers to remain until December, when some of the prominent leaders surrendered to bailiffs acting on behalf of local businesses, who claimed that they were being prevented from carrying out their normal operations, and the remaining Occupiers peacefully disbanded. While the numbers participating rose and fell according to how the situation developed (according to one poll of 1011 participants over 15 years old conducted by the Chinese University of Hong Kong, 20% participated in the movement), the movement lasted for a total of 79 days and paralysed large areas of the city. However, the government gave in to none of the demands of the Occupiers and there has been little further development up until the time of writing. There were subsequently other smaller scale demonstrations aimed at, for example, parallel traders from the Mainland, which took up much of the political discourse that developed during the Occupy movement, and a small group of localists has captured the attention of the media, in particular for its public display of the old British Hong Kong colonial flag, and more recently with the creation of a political party and the election of a number of localists to the Legislative Council. The taste of Occupy lingers. It has given new meaning to daily life, one ruled by freedom, and there is always the chance that it may break out again at any time.

Historiographical interpretation

From a historiographical perspective, the HK Umbrella Movement can be interpreted as the result of one of a long line of ambiguous – some would say duplicitous – diplomatic and political texts, beginning with the treaties made between Great Britain and China, which China has always claimed to be ‘unequal’, as they were forced upon what was then a weak country in the face of the universally dominant Royal Navy (e.g. Dong, 2005; Fairbank, 1953). Up until the signing of the Joint Declaration, there had been very little attempt at democratic representation of the HK people. It was only with the last-minute inclusion into the Joint Declaration of the statement that ‘the legislature of the Hong Kong SAR shall be constituted by elections’ and that ‘the executive authorities shall abide by the law and shall be accountable to the legislature’ that such a process was envisaged. However, the exact terms were left vague and the term ‘elections’ was not elaborated upon (the chief British negotiator at the time has noted in his memoirs that there was no question of referring to ‘direct’ elections; Flowerdew, 1998: 55). In February 1989, the NPCSC approved the Basic Law for HK, a document modelled on the Joint Declaration, which still remained vague on the question of elections and which placed the power of interpretation in the hands of the Chinese government, and not the HK judicial system. The British had agreed with the Chinese that this should be the case (Author, 1998: 65). As mentioned above, the Basic Law (Article 45)’ nevertheless states that the Chief Executive will ultimately be selected by ‘universal suffrage upon nomination by a broadly representative nominating committee in accordance with democratic procedures’. Since 1997, calls for universal suffrage on the part of the pro-democracy camp in HK have been continuous. As mentioned earlier, again, in 2007 the NPCSC ruled that HK residents would be able to elect the CE by ‘universal suffrage’ for the first time in 2017. However, on 31 August 2014 this same committee outlined new rules and procedures for the nomination of potential candidates that would allow Beijing to continue to control who could stand for election. Numerous Beijing officials have also stated that those who stand for election ‘must love China and love Hong Kong’ and ‘must not confront Beijing’. In short, it can be seen that the constitutional arrangements on offer to the HK people have been shrouded in ambiguity, to put it mildly, or duplicitous, to use a less positive, but perhaps more accurate, epithet. This helps us to understand how HK Occupy with Love and Peace came about.

Social movement theory approach

The taking of direct action to bring about social change came to the fore at the beginning of the 20th century, with the suffragette movement for women’s rights being an outstanding example. Such movements can involve strikes, protest marches and various forms of civil disobedience. The 1960s are sometimes thought of as the golden age of political protest, with the student movement in France and the anti-war and civil rights demonstrations in the United States being important historical examples. More recently, there has been a proliferation of Occupy actions, as already mentioned in the introduction to this article.

As stated by Eyerman (2006), ‘[a]social movement emerges when groups of disparate and ever-changing individuals sense they are united and moving in the same direction’ (p. 193). Social movements, such as Occupy movements, extend the power of people’s ability to act on the world. ⁴ People feel that they do not have a lot of power in the face of the existing social order, so resort to using their bodies. Their rationale is that change may happen when a threat is created to property and power. There is the notion of collective power to reshape the city, an idea going back to Lefebvre’s (1991) right to the city (see also Butler, 2011; Harvey, 2008). Lefebvre (1991) observed that ‘new social relationships call for a new space, and vice versa’ (p. 59). Such social movements thus often embody the sort of worlds their adherents want to see, which can mean new physical structures that demonstrate that another world is possible. By anticipating new ways of living and relating to each other, such actions begin to build the future in the present. Domineering relations are replaced by egalitarian ones and there is the experience of a different type of reality, a joy of resistance, the space becomes ‘ours’. As Harvey (2008) put it, ‘the question of what kind of city we want cannot be divorced from that of what kind of social ties, relationship to nature, lifestyles, technologies and aesthetic values we desire’ (p. 23). Such relationships are embodied in many of the semiotic images I noted as I wandered through the sites in the HK Umbrella Movement, from the collective food kitchens to the slogans and songs, from the various forms of artwork to the attempts to grow food in the concreted streets. On a number of occasions I noted women with young children, sometimes sleeping in tents. In social movements, according to Eyerman (2006), ‘a collective story emerges, linking places and events together and a metaphor, the movement, is applied. “We are here now, we were there then, and we will be together in the future. We are a movement”’ (p. 196). ‘The movement’, according to Eyerman (2006), ‘is both the setting, the space, the practices, and the outcome’ p.193.

As I mingled in the Occupy crowds, it was noticeable that they were not made up of just students. There were many older people, even in their eighties, and there were many school children. One amazing site in Admiralty was to walk past the makeshift library and see dozens of school children doing their homework. This social solidarity is evident throughout the field notes I made and interviews I conducted. As an example, I can refer to an observation I made on a visit to the Admiralty site on the occasion of a televised meeting between the HK Chief Secretary accompanied by government officials and a group of student Occupy movement leaders on 21 October 2014. I observed the Occupiers in Admiralty as they viewed the telecast which was relayed via a giant television screen.

Performance theory approach

Occupy can also be understood in terms of performance theory (Butler, 1990; Goffman, 1971), with its focus on drama, staging and scripts, as well as actual performing. In applying performance theory to Occupy, the dramatological model can be extended to the macro-sociological domain. Performances are the social processes through which actors display for others the meaning of their social situation (Eyerman, 2006: 196). This is the sense of Goffman’s (1971) seminal, The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life, except Occupy movements are not everyday events; they are events which break daily rules and routines and open up a space for public protest (Schechner, 1985). My ethnographic field notes demonstrate that performance operated on a more micro level as well as the macro level of the movement as a whole against the HK and Beijing governments. An example of this micro-level performance is evident in the following vignette recorded on a visit to the Mongkok site on 24 October 2014.

Identity theory approach

Identity may be of the individual or of the group. With Occupy, we are primarily concerned with the latter. Identities are discursively constructed (to include all forms of semiosis), multiple and contested. In question with the HK Umbrella Movement was HK identity and the identity of the Occupiers. HK is an SAR, so one cannot talk about national identity. However, the literature on national identity is relevant, for example, Wodak et al.’s (2009) work on the discursive construction of Austrian national identity and Anderson’s (1991) notion of ‘imagined communities’. An iconic expression of the identity of the Occupiers and their imagined community was manifested in the Lennon Wall, a display of tens of thousands of coloured post-it notes carrying messages on democracy and universal suffrage posted on the walls of the government offices in Admiralty. ⁵ The following slogans, emphasising the democratic identity desired by the Occupiers, are typical of those I noted during several visits to this site:

An important feature of identity is that it is established through oppositions. With regard to the HK Umbrella Movement, there were two imagined communities for HK: that of the Occupiers set against that of the HK and Mainland authorities and their supporters. For the Occupiers, their imagined HK community included a Western conception of democracy; their members cited the International Covenant for Civil and Political Rights as a standard for universal suffrage, which was ultimately at stake with the movement. They were against what they claimed was the rampant collusion of the HK government and property developers and other tycoons, and they viewed civil disobedience as a valid form of protest. The Mainland and HK governments, in contrast, imagined a community which emphasised nation-building, with an emphasis on one country over two systems; they cited the Basic Law and rulings by the NPC and its affiliates as their model for constitutional development, and they emphasised ‘Gradual and orderly progress according to the actual situation’, as stated in the Basic Law. They emphasised a hegemonic patriotic discourse in which loyal subjects must ‘love China and love HK’, as argued by various Mainland officials. They wanted HK to be ‘an economic city, not a political city’. And they viewed Occupy as ‘illegal’ and contrary to the ‘rule of law’. These elements of the contrasting identities were consistently evident in the press and television accounts relating to Occupy that I collected as the movement unfolded. In Flowerdew (2016), I have documented these contrasting identities in an analysis of a television interview involving a founding member and prominent leader of Occupy, Benny Tai Yiu-ting, on one side, and a leading anti-Occupy member of the Hong Kong Legislative Council, Priscilla Leung Mei-fun, on the other side.

If the above elements of identity are on the level of ideas, identity was also established in a whole range of material oppositions, for example the carnival-like mode of dress of many of the Occupiers contrasting with the neat uniforms of the police, and the makeshift defensive equipment consisting of umbrellas, home-made gas masks and shields of the Occupiers in contrast to the sophisticated weaponry of the police, including batons, riot shields, pepper spray and tear gas. These aspects of identity display served to persuade the public audience to take the side of the Occupiers. This was most notable in the Occupiers’ non-violent civil disobedience approach, reminiscent of Ghandi’s civil disobedience movement, which allowed the Occupiers to claim the moral high ground. Support increased greatly for the Occupiers when the police used tear gas against them and the images were distributed internationally. This explains the more hands-off approach of the authorities subsequently. Their use of tear gas alienated not only members of the HK public, but also the international audience, including foreign governments, who became critical of the HK and Beijing leadership. Support for Occupy also increased when images went viral of police beating a protester in a ‘shady corner’ (Jones and Li, 2016).

A strong sense of ritual was evident in the public displays of commitment and solidarity of the Occupiers, as displayed in their scripts, placards, collective singing and chanting, and so on. Many songs, for example were written by the Occupiers and their supporters, some of which I heard sung during my field work. This collective activity no doubt served to mould strong emotional bonds between the group members – ‘we are all here together, we must share something’ – as well as a collective memory – ‘we were all there together’ (Berezin, 2001: 93, cited in Eyerman, 2006: 196). Not only that, as Eyerman (2006) has written, ‘[c]ollective self-presentation is part of the process of collective identity formation’ (p. 199). This explains, for example, the significance of the ubiquitous yellow ribbons worn by occupiers and their use of the yellow umbrella symbol for the movement, as I recorded in my field notes.

The public identity of the Occupiers was most obvious and tangible in its iconography; in its libraries, study areas, first-aid tents, canteens, religious shrines, stewards, rubbish collectors, postal service, and so on; and in its democracy, or Lennon, wall a huge display of ‘post-it’ stickers bearing messages of support for Occupy, its yellow umbrellas, its yellow ribbons, its gas masks and its numerous works of art, all of which were recorded in my ethnographic field notes and photographs. ⁶ In addition to these visual signs, the identity of Occupy was represented in its verbal genres: in its slogans, its placards, its songs, its speeches, its debates and its innumerable social media genres (texts, web sites, twitter and SMS messages, etc.), which served to make it a global event, as noted again in my data. Finally, HK identity was contributed to through choice of language. As noted in my field work, again, the signage was in traditional characters, with features unique to Cantonese, setting the Occupiers apart from the Mainland, where simplified characters are used. As for the spoken mode, that was Cantonese, contrasting with the Putonghua (Mandarin) of the Mainland. A lot of the signage was also in English, one of HK’s two official languages, setting HK apart from Mainland China again, and identifying it with the global community. A sense of identity, of course, was present at the individual level. I sat down next to one couple of students (a boy and girl) who were reading photocopied academic papers. ‘If we lose this battle we lose our dignity. Fight on!’, they told me.

Social action as text approach

Occupy can be interpreted in line with the notion that meaningful actions can be considered as texts (Butler, 2011; Ricoeur, 1971; Scollon, 2001). Such an approach is in line with contemporary views of communication viewed in terms of overall semiotic practices, and not just text and talk. Just as we can respond to a text, so can we respond to a meaningful action (or artefact). As Serafini (2014) put it with regard to performance activism in London, the bodies become both the instrument of expression and the means of occupation. The bodies lay claim to the public spaces, spaces which had previously been read differently. As I wandered through the Occupy sites, I was able to observe multiple facets of the situation in terms of social action as text. With regard to the HK Umbrella Movement, the Admiralty space can be ‘read’ as the site of government power; the Causeway Bay space as a capitalist centre regularly ‘invaded’ by Mainlanders; and the Mongkok space more symbolic of working class power. In all cases, vehicles were replaced by human bodies. The occupation of each of these sites by the Occupiers transformed their previously understood meanings (resemioticised them) into something else. They came to symbolise democratic values (liberty, justice and equality), freedom from traditional social constraints, and a better way of living than that provided by the status quo. This was evident to me, as I circulated through the Occupy sites, in the way that the Occupiers had set up their camps on very egalitarian lines and in the cooperative, self-help features of the movements such as the libraries, first-aid posts, food kitchens and even the way the tents were uniformly organised in neat street-like arrangements with street names and numbers for each address, none wishing to stand out as superior to the general crowd. Supporting this interpretation, on one occasion I came across a couple of Occupiers who were growing a plant out of a crack in the concrete of the roadway outside their tent.

Furthermore, there was an element of Bakhtinian Carnival in the way normally well-behaved middle-class youths, as well as more mature, ‘respectable’ members of the bourgeois class and older people into their 80s, let go of their inhibitions, parading themselves in the street, many of them dressed in outlandish clothes and exhibiting their primal energies for all to see. To give just two examples of this from my ethnographic data, I have already referred to the two Occupiers dressed as American footballers. During another visit, I also observed another Occupier dressed as Captain America. These instances can be read as a subversion of and liberation from the prevailing order of discourse and ideology through chaos and humour. As Cockburn et al. (2000) have written of social movements in general:

ritual aspects of contemporary demonstrations have come to resemble carnival-like progressions, ‘occasions’ (Hetherington, 1998: esp. chapter 7) or ‘happenings’ where the display and performance of identity and the more traditional politics of protest flow easily into one another. Such occasions provide a space where opposition can be performed, a ‘scene of protest’. (p. 71)

As Bakhtin describes the medieval culture of carnival, it creates ‘temporary liberation from prevailing truth and from the established order’, where ‘all [are] considered equal’ (p. 10).

If evidence were needed for this Bakhtinian reading of the Occupy text, Chief Superintendent Steve Hu Chu-ta, one of the police officers in charge of policing the movement, was reported as stating as follows:

Some were dressed in different costumes, concealing their own identities as if they were going to a carnival. However, the fact remains that this is an unlawful assembly which has affected many people. (South China Morning Post 26/10/14, p. 4)

Hu’s statement followed the arrest of the Occupier I referred to earlier who was dressed as Captain America, whose name was Andy Yung Wai-yib:

… for Andy Yung Wai-yib – the man behind the Captain America costume, who has been released on bail – dressing up is a way to protect himself and to provide a comic buffer between protesters and troublemakers. It was his way of bringing creativity and peace to the civil-disobedience movement, he said. (South China Morning Post, 26/10/14, p. 4)

Certainly, the police were somewhat bewildered when faced with this type of protester. The serious and sober authorities, including police and government officials, found it difficult facing off against the humour, derision and ridicule of many of the protestors; in some ways, these officials might have been more comfortable dealing with more violent protest (Bruner, 2005).

Finally, social action gave rise to intertextual relations. Intertexts were both imported to and exported from the Occupy sites. With regard to the former, based on my ethnographic observation I can mention just a few of the more striking imported intertexts here. One frequently reproduced image was that of C.Y. Leung, the HK Chief Executive, considered the chief villain in the piece. I have also previously referred to the two men I observed standing next to each other, both wearing American footballers’ shirts, one with 689 on its back, the number of votes by which Leung was ‘elected’ to his position. On another occasion, I saw a young female Occupier posing with a cardboard cutout of the Chinese leader Xi Jinping, Xi and the Occupier ironically united under the yellow umbrella of the Occupy movement held up by the Occupier. The humour of these intertextual tropes, of course, relates back to the transgressive carnivalesque humour of Occupy as text mentioned earlier.

Occupiers used their bodies to export meanings outside the sites where they were protesting and to get their message across to the world at large. A good example is the yellow umbrellas employed by the Occupiers. The yellow umbrella, an extension of the Occupiers’ bodies, became a symbol of the movement. The colour yellow was subsequently transferred to the yellow ribbons worn by Occupy supporters both on Occupy sites and elsewhere. For example, I noted such ribbons worn by my students on my university campus and attached to various places around the campus. I also noted them as I travelled on the Mass Transit Railway. On a number of occasions, both during and after the Occupy event, a giant yellow banner, looking like a ribbon and bearing the message ‘I want true universal suffrage’ (in Chinese), was hung by a group of Occupiers from the Lion Rock in Kowloon. Lion Rock, which towers over the Kowloon Peninsula and thus can be seen from many parts of HK (including my university), is an iconic place. It symbolises HK people’s resilience and endurance during hard times. Pictures of the banner were disseminated by both social and traditional media worldwide. These examples demonstrate how the meanings attached to the social actions of the Occupiers were transported beyond the actual Occupy sites.

On another level of action as text, Occupy was resemiotisised in the media through metaphors. Metaphors recontextualise existing social meanings in new ways. In talking about Occupy, as shown in my corpus of newspaper texts concerning Occupy, the government and its supporters employed metaphors relating to the social actions/processes of war/conflict/violence and sickness/disease/physical or bodily harm, with the Occupy side represented as the aggressive force. They referred to the movement as an outbreak, as threatening the well-being of HK and as a blow to the economy. The Occupy side also used war/conflict/violence metaphors, but represented itself as the side in the conflict exercising care and restraint and standing up for their rights. Thus, they wanted to ‘ fight for a democratic political system’ and referred to ‘the struggle for genuine democracy in Hong Kong [going] on’. Such metaphors – emanating from the bodies of the Occupiers – were continually packaged and repackaged by the opposing sides.

Conclusion

As stated in the introduction, this article sought to find answers to the question as to how to understand the HK Umbrella Movement as a discursive event. In doing so it has invoked a range of theories to come up with explanations of why and how this important event in HK’s evolving socio-political identity occurred. The article has been grounded in my CDH approach and its focus on critical moments in discourse and has applied theories of social movements, performance, identity and social action as text. The purpose of the article is not to show how the four theories fit together, but rather how, within the overall framework of the CDH approach, they each provide different (sometimes overlapping) perspectives and ways of understanding the HK Umbrella Movement as a discursive event. At the same time as providing such triangulations, the application of different theories demonstrates how the CDH approach can accommodate a range of theories and methods, that is, how it is emblematic of a problem-driven, multiple approach to sociolinguistic research.

From a CDH point of view, the social action represented by Occupy gives new meaning to the social structure ruling in HK pre-Occupy and the aspiration of the Occupiers for something different. Occupy contrasted with everything that had gone before in HK and represented a rupture of the social order. On the other hand, from the diachronic, historiographical point of view, the HK Umbrella Movement could be viewed as a continuation of a long line of protest movements historically and internationally. This was made very clear when I attended an exhibition at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, in 2015, entitled ‘Disobedient Objects’ (http://www.vam.ac.uk/content/exhibitions/disobedient-objects/). The exhibition highlighted the powerful role of objects in movements for social change from the Suffragette movement onwards and included the HK Umbrella Movement as the latest manifestation of this phenomenon. Occupy represents a ‘critical moment’ in discourse, from a historiographical point of view, in the sense that it marked a new stage in HK’s socio-political development. It did not succeed in the short-term goal of allowing greater democracy to HK in terms of bringing forward previously promised universal suffrage, but, with the benefit of hindsight, we can see that it was truly a critical moment in so far as it led to subsequent further agitation on the political front and the election of localists to the Legislative Council. Such a perspective demonstrates the value of the diachronic aspect of the CDH approach. The findings of this study will contribute to my ongoing discourse historiography of transitional HK, but more than that, the approach and theories applied may be useful in the consideration of other social movements globally.