Critical discourse analysis in historiography studies the political discourse accompanying and at the same time constituting the whole transitional period of Hong Kong, from five years prior to the handover through a roughly equivalent period following it. The book focuses on the discourse of Chris Patten, the last British Hong Kong governor, Tung Chee-hwa, the first Chinese chief executive of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of China, a pro-Beijing newspaper, utilitarian discourse, Confucianist discourse, and other genres. The individual chapters of the book, in the form of case studies, deal with different communicative events—set piece speeches, public meetings, news articles, television addresses and interviews. As a whole, the book shows how a critical analysis of the evolving discourse employed during a political process spanning more than a decade can provide both insights for discourse analysis and understanding of a real-world political process, thereby demonstrating the potential role for critical discourse analysis in historiography, the writing of history. Flowerdew places his historical analysis within a broad historical context and outlines his theoretical and methodologogical assumptions before moving on to the discourse that constitutes much of those historical events—the discourse of the outgoing administration, the wider intercultural discourses in Hong Kong, and the discursive construction of a new Hong Kong identity.

Part 1 consists of the first four chapters and deals with the discourse of the outgoing administration. This first part analyzes the discourses of Chris Patten following the introduction of direct elections in 1991 and a second round in 1995, showing how, in the author 's view, Patten tended to open up the polity and public discourse and tried to project a particular image of Hong Kong's identity onto its people. Chs. 5, 6, and 7 constitute Part 2 and look at the wide diversity of intercultural discourses that were in play at the time of transition. In particular, we have a revealing examination of two competing discourses—that of the prodemocracy group in Hong Kong, supported by Britain, and that of the pro-Beijing forces, supported by Mainland China—which demonstrates clearly how conflict was enacted at a discursive level that was also intercultural. Political transitions not simply about politics; it is also about cultures. Discourse systems, in Scollon & Scollon's terms, are “sub-cultural systems where contrasts between one system and another are somewhat more strongly made” (Ron Scollon & Suzanne Wong Scollon, Intercultural communication: A discourse approach, 2nd edn. Oxford: Blackwell, 2001, p. 176). These subcultures, or discourse systems, or discourses, are the units of analysis employed for the intercultural case studies presented in Part 2.

Part 3 discusses the discursive construction of a new Hong Kong identity. Ch. 8 examines the discourse of the first chief executive of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of China, Tung Chee-hwa, during his first five-year period of office, following the return of Hong Kong from British to Chinese sovereignty in 1997. Ch. 9 deals with a history exhibition in postcolonial Hong Kong and sees how the formulation of “one country, two systems” was working discursively. Ch. 10 analyzes the discriminatory discursive practices of one leading liberal Hong Kong newspaper, The South China Morning Post, highlighting the continuing discrimination against people from mainland China, in spite of the reversion of sovereignty. Ch. 11 presents an analysis of the discourse of globalization from the perspective of Hong Kong and uncovers continuity from pre- to postcolonial discourse in the area of the economy in strongly supporting globalization and the free-market economy. Ch. 12 describes how postcolonial Hong Kong attempted to discursively construct itself as one of the “world cities,” that is as a center of high technology, industry, trade, banking, finance, professional activity, higher education, and the arts. In Flowerdew's analysis, the government consultation process was itself designed to promote Hong Kong as a world city and is shown to be influenced not only by the government's control of the various genres that make up the consultation, but also by its specific control of language. Ch. 13 summarizes the main findings of the study with regard to the three theoretical constructs in the title of the volume: CDA, history, and identity.

This book certainly fulfills both the author's purpose of combining discourse analysis and historiography and the readers' need for an overview of the main topics around the transitional period of Hong Kong handover from Britain to mainland China. What is more, it combines theory and practice to highlight Hong Kong's evolving political identity. The study shows how official discourses have changed in some respects during and after the period of transition, but in other areas have been maintained. With regard to political issues, official discourse has come more in line with the ideology of mainland China. Concerning economic issues, the official position has remained relatively constant, in line with Hong Kong's continuing position as an international center for trade and finance. In terms of discourse theory and method, Flowerdew demonstrates the value of a longitudinal historigraphical approach, both in terms of the contribution that it can make to discourse theory and in terms of the role that discourse can play in developing an understanding of real world issues. All in all, the book will be helpful to seasoned discourse researchers, to budding student analysts, and also to historians. It does much to demonstrate the possibility of a multimethod approach in a longitudinal study, drawing on elements of ethnography, textual pragmatics, rhetorical analysis, cognitive linguistics, genre analysis, systemic-functional linguistics, and corpus linguistics.