THE DISCOURSE OF COLONIAL WITHDRAWAL - A CASE-STUDY IN THE CREATION OF MYTHIC DISCOURSE

Based on a large corpus of speeches, interviews, public meetings, writ ings, and other pronouncements, this paper critically examines the dis course of the last British Hong Kong governor, Chris Fatten, in the fi ve years leading up to the change of sovereignty over Hong Kong from B ritain to China, in 1997. The thesis of the paper is that in its focus on four issues-the free market economy, the freedom of the individual , the rule of law, and democracy-each of which was designed to highlig ht an aspect of what Fatten promoted as Britain's legacy to I-long Kon g, Fatten's discourse can be characterized in terms of a myth concerne d with ensuring that Britain could withdraw from its last major colony with honour. The paper analyses four discursive strategies used by Fa tten in the promotion of his myth: the transformation of old political genres and the introduction of new ones, presupposition, involvement (the use of indexicals), and lexical structuring and reiteration. As s uch, the paper is presented as a case study in the creation of mythica l discourse in the field of politics.