NEW MEDIA, NEW NARRATIVE: LEXICAL CHOICES AND LANGUAGE RESISTANCE IN THE POST-1975 VIETNAMESE DIASPORA

Tóm tắt

A common assertion among overseas Vietnamese communities that since the country’s reunification in 1975, vocabulary from North Vietnam (“Northern words”) has replaced terms used in South Vietnam (“Southern words”). This study presents the first empirical test of this claim using a corpus-based approach. We analyzed word frequencies in four major online newspapers - two published in Vietnam and two by diaspora communities in the United States - drawing from a published, community-sourced list of contested vocabulary. Our findings confirm that Northern words appear significantly more frequently in Vietnambased news sources. However, contrary to the narrative of linguistic resistance, there was no significant difference in the overall usage of Southern words between the two corpora. Moreover, the data reveal a counter-intuitive pattern where some Southern words are used less frequently than their Northern equivalents, even in the US-published newspapers.