The diversity in language socialization: Gender and social stratum in a North Vietnamese village

Drawing on a complementarity of different methods such as statistical analyses, conversation analyses, and ethnography, this dissertation focuses on language socialization and explores the shared as well as differentiated patterns of discursive practices in a small North Vietnamese village in 1990–1991.; Unlike several studies of language socialization, the thesis demonstrates that children's process of becoming members of the community was not only culturally specific, but also varied with different social factors such as interactants' age, gender, socioeconomic conditions, or the multifaceted interaction among these factors in actual contexts. In other words, although reflecting a number of culturally salient features such as respecting age and/or hierarchical status, language socialization practices in the above village revealed that children of the same community were socialized to different identities due to different ideologies and/or material conditions they were living in. Herewith, the thesis supports the argument for alternative definitions of the same social identities such as gender and/or membership of a certain social stratum people expressed in and through their discursive practices.; Furthermore, the dissertation shows that villagers' practices of language socialization represented both structural and individual patterns. As agents of their socialization processes, children not only learned the cultural values provided by others, but also made choices to express their own identities. Working within the community of practice model set out by Eckert and McConnell-Ginet (1992, 1995), the thesis suggests that the notions of structural and individual patterns need to be dynamically understood. Hereafter, a certain pattern such as the egalitarian way of address and self-reference of children in the same age group could be considered structural if seen from the perspective of a certain community of practice, and at the same time “individual” if seen from that of another community of practice.; In general, the dissertation attempts to take advantage of different methods of research on language and society to explore the interaction of contextual parameters, especially gender and social strata, in everyday practices of language socialization in an apparently homogenous community.