This project will investigate the extent to which discursive practices are structured by region-specific native gender and class categories. The investigator, a linguistic anthropologist, will test three sets of hypotheses on gender and discursive practices which have been developed within the Durkheimian, rational-choice, and neo-Marxist theoretical frameworks. These hypotheses will be tested in six communities in North and South Vietnam, which offers a valuable test case because the socio- cultural differences between North and South allow a controlled comparison. The methods will include extensive formal interviewing and the extensive tape-recording and transcription of speech interactions. This research is important because it will create a very valuable data-set of naturally occurring speech from a developing country, collected under controlled conditions. The knowledge gained about language changes with respect to gender relations in a country undergoing rapid socio-economic change will be valuable as a comparison with gender relations in the developing world. The increased awareness of the theoretical importance of subtle markers of inequality such as speech patterns that can result from this research can help us understand how to deal with inequality.
