Shifting style-shifts? Higher-order style-shifting in Hong Kong Cantonese-English languaging through indexicality and audience design

This study examines style-shifting between monolingual and bilingual Cantonese-English styles in Hong Kong through audience design and indexicality. Using narrative elicitation, YouTube data, and an attitudinal experiment, it finds that bilingual styles are often downplayed in public but appear more robust in scripted speech, where speakers exercise greater control and tap into alternative indexical meanings. Attitudinal data confirm that these monolingual/bilingual styles carry distinct social meanings, shaped by processes such as enregisterment, which enable their mobilization. Based on these findings, the study proposes an “independent layers” socio-indexical model, where these styles function as distinct yet overlapping resources. In a field focused on micro -level shifts, this research contributes a novel Hong Kong perspective, showing how speakers navigate macro -stylistic choices amid shifting audiences, ideological pressures, and identity work in a postcolonial context. • Audience orientation exerts a stronger influence on style-shifting than agency. • Scripted speech increases bilingual use, revealing calculated agentive stylization. • English monolingual style increasingly evokes elitism or foreignness for youth. • Bilingual styles receive contradictory judgments, exposing dynamic indexicality. • Findings support an “independent layers” model over additive compositionality.