A Path Less Travelled: Cross-cultural Background of Sociolinguistic Postgraduate Aaron Anfinson

PhD candidate Aaron Anfinson has come to Hong Kong and HKU via an unusual path that has crossed countries, cultures and religions, and is informing his research.

Mr Anfinson is the son of gospel singers and grew up in the sparsely-populated American Midwest, often traveling from town to town with his parents’ group.

At 17, wanting a university education, he enrolled in the US National Guard, which paid his tuition fees provided he stayed with the military for six years. He was to be assigned to water purification services for humanitarian missions, but then the Iraq war began and he was grounded in the US, where he completed an English literature degree at North Dakota State University and taught in lower-income schools.

During this time, he also met his partner whose father was from Saudi Arabia and who grew up in a Muslim household. The cross of cultures and experiences left both with a desire to travel. In 2008, with his military commitment completed, they set off.

They first spent 18 months teaching English in Vietnam, then two years in Hong Kong where Mr Anfinson earned a Master of Education at HKU. In late 2011, following the “Arab Spring,” they were inspired to travel to the region of his wife’s family. They taught in Oman for a year, but Mr Anfinson, inspired by his experiences and the changing world, was keen to reflect on all that from a more academic perspective.

In 2013 he arrived at HKU to pursue a PhD on the sociolinguistics of legitimacy, attracted in part by the opportunity to have Professor Adam Jaworski as his supervisor.

He is looking at the branding of the nation and how entities such as the Islamic State use branding, language and nation-state frameworks to define a collective identity. The Islamic State, for instance, produces slick publications in English aimed at Muslims in Western countries.

“What makes IS different from al-Qaeda is this willingness to grab onto things like the English language and social media, simultaneously promoting sectarian violence and intolerance on the ground,” he said.

“They have been using contemporary branding techniques, attempting to construct and market an identity to the outside world. They are attempting legitimacy through the mediatisation of violence and through constructing their own ‘state’ institutions. I’m interested in the language of that.”

He is still sifting through his research, grateful for the receptiveness to multi-disciplinary research in the Faculty and for the open environment in Hong Kong, where he has the freedom to pursue a potentially contentious topic.

“I’m lucky to be in the Faculty of Arts and the School of English, studying under Adam. I’m able to witness and take in such amazing, multidisciplinary research. I’m also able to receive feedback on my own work from various perspectives. This has been rewarding. Everybody has been very supportive. They are as curious as I am to see how my research will turn out.”

See the original article in Arts Faculty Newsletter Winter 2015.