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Professor Christopher Hutton
Professor, Chair of English

Professor Christopher Hutton

MA, DPhil Oxon, MA Columbia

Contact Information

Phone

3917-5142

Email

chutton@hku.hk

Profile

Professor Christopher Hutton is chair professor in the School of English at the University of Hong Kong. He studied modern languages and linguistics at Oxford University (BA 1980; DPhil 1988). He also holds an MA in Linguistics and Yiddish Studies from Columbia University (1985), and an LLB from Manchester Metropolitan University (2008). Professor Hutton held a research position at the Oxford Centre for Hebrew and Jewish Studies from 1985-1986, and was Assistant Professor in the Department of Germanic Languages at the University of Texas at Austin from 1987-1989, before moving to Hong Kong. His research is concerned with the politics of language and linguistics, especially in the context of law, and the history of Western linguistics, focusing on its relationship with race theory. In addition, he has a longstanding interest in slang, jargon and underworld language, having for many years taught a course in which students do project work on special ‘sub-languages’, e.g. the special vocabulary used by taxi drivers, criminals, prisoners or restaurant workers.

Research Expertise

Language and the law; history and politics of linguistics; sociolinguistics of slang and jargon

Courses Taught

Language and Jargon (ENGL2048)

Saussure and the Politics of Linguistics (ENGL3041)

Law, Meaning, and Interpretation (ENGL2126, LALS 3002, LLAW 3161)

The Law of Signs: Interpretative Controversies in Legal Semiotics

(ENGL2168, LALS3011, LLAW3264)

Publications

The People that Never Were: Linguistic Scholarship and the Invention of the Aryans. New York: Oxford University Press, 2025.

The Tyranny of Ordinary Meaning: Corbett v Corbett and the Invention of Legal Sex. Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave, 2019.

The Legal Personhood of Animals: Integrational Perspectives on the Self. London: Routledge, 2019.

Signs, Meaning and Experience: Integrational Approaches to Linguistics and Semiotics. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter (with Adrian Pablé), 2015.

Word Meaning and Legal Interpretation: An Introductory Guide. London: Palgrave, 2014.

Language, Meaning and the Law. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press; New York: Columbia University Press, 2019.

Definition in Theory and Practice: Language, Lexicography and the Law. London: Continuum. (with R. Harris), 2007.

Race and the Third Reich: Linguistics, Racial Anthropology and Genetics in the Dialectic of Volk. Cambridge: Polity Press, 2005.

Linguistics and the Third Reich. Mother-tongue Fascism, Race and the Science of Language. London: Routledge, 1999.

Abstraction and Instance: the Type-token Relation in Linguistic Theory. Oxford: Pergamon, 1990.