GENERIC REFERENCE, GENERIC PROPOSITIONS, AND DEICTIC SELECTIVITY

Identifying acts of generic reference in everyday interaction is not always a simple matter and, even once identified, specifying their functions—the way such forms of reference articulate with other practices of social interaction—is more challenging still. Part of the problem here results from thinking about generic reference as a ‘semantic’ notion. Lyons, for instance, writes that the sentence, the lion is a friendly beast, may be used to ‘assert a generic proposition’ (1977:194), which is to say ‘a proposition which says something, not about this or that group of lions or about any particular individual lion, but about the class of lions as such’ (1977:194). For Lyons then, a given noun phrase admits of a generic reading in the context of a generic proposition. Now, although Lyons suggests that ‘(t)he linguist can contribute to the study of reference by describing the grammatical structures and processes which particular language-systems provide for referring to individuals and groups of individuals’ (1977:197) and although he acknowledges that ‘(d)efinite noun-phrases, like ‘the lion’, and indefinite noun-phrases, like ‘a lion’, are far from being intersubstitutable in all kinds of sentences expressing generic propositions’ (1977:196), the emphasis in his account is squarely on the presumed ‘semantics’ of generic references and the propositions with which they are associated.

An alternative way of thinking about these matters has been developed by Asif Agha (Reference Agha2007) in his elaboration of the Peircean notion of deictic selectivity. On this view, the generic reading is a pragmatic (or interactional) effect of co-occurring signs which together constitute a particular grammatico-textual pattern. Thus, according to Agha, deictic expressions differ in terms of their ‘degree and type of selectivity’ (2007:42) where selectivity refers to the way, as Peirce (Reference Peirce1895/1998:16) put it, they ‘inform the hearer how he is to pick out one of the objects intended’.Footnote ⁵ Deictics then ‘link the scenario of utterance more or less tightly to a universe of referents, making referents more or less specifically locatable vis-à-vis the here-and-now of utterance’ (Agha Reference Agha2007:43). Agha considers the differences between propositions the referent of which is identified by the following expressions.

These differ in terms of how tightly the referent is anchored to the context of utterance, ‘the anchoring becoming progressively looser as we move rightwards in the series’ (Agha Reference Agha2007:43). At one extreme, you formulates the referent as both co-present and more specifically as the particular participant addressed by the utterance. Moving rightwards one step, that man formulates the referent as a non-addressed but either co-present and perceptually accessible, or, anaphorically presupposed, other. The man serves as an anaphor the referent of which is presupposed, or, as part of a definite description used to introduce either a hypothetical person or one mentioned for the first time. Finally, some man ‘differs from the others in providing no formulation of address, physical co-presence, uniqueness, or antecedence in discourse, merely the presupposition that a referent x exists and is characterizable as a man’ (2007:43, see table 1).

Table 1.

Deictic selectivity, adapted from Agha Reference Agha2007.

One particularly important aspect of Agha's account is the way it shifts attention towards those grammatico-textual features by which a referent is tied more or less tightly to the context of utterance. On this view, nomic or generic reference is understood not as the total absence of deictic instruction but rather as the least selective form thereof, such that ‘(i)t permits talk of referents (things, times, places, etc.) that are not locatable in a determinate way with respect to the current speech scenario and, hence, presented in generic, abstract or collective terms’ (2007:44).Footnote ⁶

Agha's useful grading of noun phrases in terms of degree of selectivity should not be allowed to obscure the fact that a generic reading is the product of an encompassing grammatico-textual pattern. Consider, for instance, English definite noun phrases such as ‘the lion’ and ‘the waiter’ which, as Lyons noted, admit both generic and specific interpretations. While the interpretation is ultimately determined by a larger context of co-occurring signs, we can tip the balance one way or the other by inserting such a phrase within different grammatical frames.

1. (3)

   1. a. The waiter is bringing the food.

   2. b. The waiter brings the food.

   3. c. The waiter is the one who brings the food.

For the first case, in which the NP ‘the waiter’ figures as the subject of a present progressive sentence, it is difficult if not impossible to derive a generic reading. In the second, the non-past habitual aspect makes the generic reading much easier to get. In the final case, the combination of non-past habitual aspect with a restrictive relative clause makes a generic reading even more natural. What these examples serve to make clear, I think, is that generic meaning involves a type of presupposition not so different from that associated with so-called ‘definite descriptions’. In the case of definite descriptions which, since Russell's ‘On denoting’ (Reference Russell1905) have stood close to the centre of philosophical controversy, what is presupposed, on one analysis at least, is the unique existence of a particular individual. In the case of generics, by contrast, what is presupposed is the unique existence of a class of individuals such as a natural kind (see Graff Reference Graff2001). It is in this sense that generic reference is intimately connected with (social) ontology.

DEICTIC SELECTIVITY IN VIETNAMESE INTERACTION

I now turn to consider examples drawn from a conversation between a group of four friends and consisting of two couples: Thanh and Linh, Huy and Phuong. The participants, close friends for many years, gathered at this café at the request of Linh. At the time the recording was made, all four had completed an undergraduate degree and Phuong had also completed a masters. Thanh was working as a journalist, Huy as an engineer in a hospital, while Phuong and Linh were continuing their studies as graduate students. Like many others, these people consider Hanoi their home, although all of them have family in rural areas and all make periodic visits to their natal village to attend death anniversaries, weddings, and other important events. An initial sense of the more selective deictic forms used in ordinary conversation can be had from a consideration of the following short stretch of interaction. Here the participants are talking about the café in which they are having coffee. Prior to the talk shown, several members of the group have complained that the service is very slow at the café and that they have available very few of the items listed in the menu.

1. (4) VNR_05

   105  Phuong:  Cái quán này   rất   là   thoải mái  trông  cũng được, đẹp đẽ

   cl  café  prox  very  comp comfortable looking also get,  nice

   ‘This restaurant is very comfortable and looks nice.’

   106  Thanh: Ủa, mà sao  lại  biết  quán này nhỉ

   Oh, yet why again know cafe  prox tfp

   ‘So how do you know about this café?’

   107  Huy: Ui   giời. Vào   một ngày đẹp   trời.

   INTJ sky. Enter one day beautiful weather.

   ‘Gosh. On a nice day. The rain was heavy, the road was blocked’

   108  Trời mưa to, đường tắc thì

   Sky rain big, road  blocked

   ‘The rain was heavy, the road was blocked’

   109  ta rẽ   vào đây uống cà phê thì biết

   we turn enter here drink coffee then know

   ‘We came in here to drink coffee so that's how we know about it’

   110  Linh: À

   INTJ

   ‘Oh’

   111  Phuong: Hai tiếng sau đỡ   tắc ta lại về

   Two hours later, reduce block we again return

   ‘After two hours, the roads cleared and we went back home.’

In this case, the referring expression, cái quán này ‘this café’ (line 105) is highly selective, specifying by means of the classifier cái and the post-posed proximal deictic này a singular café located somewhere in close vicinity with the current speech encounter, or co-extensive with it. Quán này ‘this café’ though produced without a classifier is similarly selective. Finally, in line 107, một ngày ‘one day’ specifies a particular day but not one that the hearers should attempt to identify. These observations accord with a literature on the expression of definiteness in languages that have classifier constructions but not articles.Footnote ⁷ It is generally agreed that within this group of languages there are two types exemplified by Mandarin on the one hand and Cantonese on the other. In Mandarin bare nouns may have definite interpretations when they occur in subject or object position whereas in Cantonese such an interpretation is only possible if the noun occurs with a numeral classifier. Vietnamese patterns with Cantonese in this respect since bare nouns do not permit definite readings (see, inter alia, Jenks Reference Jenks2018; Löbel Reference Löbel, Unterbeck, Riassanen, Nevalainen and Saari2000; Trinh Reference Trinh and Reich2011).

In the following case, Phuong refers to the café again, now formulating it, however, as a ‘business’ by using the expression bọn này. Bọn is used to refer to a group of persons. In responding, Thanh first clarifies the sense of this expression, reformulating it as Quán này. He then refers to the same entity using the anaphoric pronoun nó.

1. (5) VNR_05

   116 Phuong: Hay là bọn  này  là nó gọi là đi rửa tiền ở đâu nhỉ

   Or  is group here is it  call is go wash money where tfp

   ‘Or is this here what is called money laundering?’

   117 Thanh: Quán này à. Thông thường thì nó phải làm cái gì khác nữa

   Café prox q. Usually    top 3 must do something else more

   ‘This café eh? Usually they must do something else here as well.’

These are highly selective referential expressions used to identify specific entities—groups of people (e.g. the proprietors of a business), places (e.g. a café), segments of time (e.g. a day), and so on. Compare such references with those contained in the following utterance which is said by Phuong to Huy in an effort to persuade him to take off Thanh's glasses, which he has been wearing, apparently as a joke.

1. (6) VNR_05

   43 Phuong: Giàu đôi con mắt, khó đôi bàn tay

   Rich cl cl eyes, hard cl hands

   ‘Rich eyes, hard hands’

Interpretations of this bit of proverbial wisdom vary widely. Here, however, Phuong appears to mean something along the lines of ‘both eyes and hands are important for success’. In any case, the references to ‘eyes’ and to ‘hands’ appear to be quite generic. Often at least, references to body parts such as ‘eyes’ and ‘hands’ are embedded within a possessive construction, one that links the referenced entity either to some specific person talked about or to one of the speech act participants. Here there is no such encompassing noun phrase and the parts are left, as it were, floating independent of any body to which they might otherwise be attached (cf. Boas Reference Boas1911:64). Consider also the case given as (7) in which the participants have been talking about the attitudes of older people and have proposed that there is a widespread preference among them for sons over daughters. At line 286, Huy is delivering something close to proverbial wisdom when he suggests, as a possible reason for this preference, that when a woman marries she leaves her family and patrilineage but when a boy marries he brings his wife home.

1. (7) VNR_05

   286 Huy: Con gái lấy chồng là mất. Còn con trai thì nó mang về

   cl  girl take husband is loss. And cl boy 3 bring home

   ‘A girl takes a husband, her family loses her. But a boy brings her home.’

   287  Nó còn lấy được

   He still take acquire

   ‘He takes a wife, he gains.’

   288 Phuong: Cả trâu  lẫn nghé

   All buffalo rec calf

   ‘Both buffalo and calf’

Here then the references to con gái ‘girl’ and con trai ‘boy’ are clearly generic referring not to specific individuals but rather to kinds of persons. Furthermore, these references are embedded within a generic proposition, which purports to articulate a timeless truth about the consequences of marriage for families. More striking still is Phuong's addition, Cả trâu lẫn nghé ‘Both buffalo and calf’ which extends the observation by metaphorically casting the wife brought home as a buffalo and the child she bears as the calf, both of which are incorporated into the husband's patrilineage. In a case like this, the referring expressions (trâu and nghé) lack any deictic selectivity, and, as there is no predicate, there is also no selectivity for tense either. The phrase then is cast as a timeless, nomic truth completely independent of any particular time or place.

Another common pattern for generic reference involves total elision of the referring expression altogether such that the generically formulated entity is merely presupposed. The example given as (8) is said to Huy while he is wearing Thanh's glasses.

1. (8) VNR_05

   28 Linh: đeo Footnote ⁸ vào trông có vẻ trí thức

   Wear enter looks like intellectual

   ‘Wearing glasses makes one look like an intellectual’

Here then there is no reference to the glasses at all, but this is nevertheless presupposed by the utterance. And what is presupposed is generic, not specific, that is, not the specific pair of glasses Huy is at this point wearing but rather glasses as a class.

ON SEX, GENDER, AND SUFFERING

In the wake of the discussion about the preference for sons among older people, Thanh raises the matter of differences between men and women more generally. This he introduces with the following.

1. (9) VNR_05

   291 Thanh: Nhưng mà anh, anh thì anh nghĩ  là,  nam nữ

   But    eb  eb   eb  think comp, man woman

   ‘But I- I- I think that, man and woman,’

   292  thì  nói  chung  là,  nam thì  nó cũng có  cái hay của nam

   comp speak general comp man top 3  also  have cl good poss man,

   ‘that generally speaking, there are good things about man,’

   293  nữ   thì nó cũng có cái hay của nó

   female top 3 also have cl good poss 3

   ‘there are also good things about woman.’

   294  Nếu mà chẳng có  nữ,   thì anh em mình nam thì đi đâu. Nhể

   If    no  have woman, then eb ys self man comp go where. tfp

   ‘If there were no women, where would we be? Right?’

In the talk at line 291, Thanh introduces the topic of sex and gender using the collocation, nam nữ ‘male female’. Although used here to refer to persons and thus to ‘man’ and ‘woman’, these terms have a slightly more biological, as opposed to social, connotation than the expressions đàn ông ‘man’ and đàn bà ‘woman’. Here Thanh uses them with no classifier and no deictic marking thereby formulating the topic in the most generic way possible. Having established the generic reference to ‘man’ and ‘woman’, Thanh goes on to suggest, apropos of the discussion regarding a widespread preference for sons, that there are, in fact, good things about men and good things about women. Then, taking a decidedly male perspective he proposes (line 294), ‘If there were no women, where would we be? Right?’ (apparently said to Huy).

Below in (10), Phuong (line 296) asks Thanh, ‘But you agree that women suffer more than men right?’. This leads into a discussion and something of a joking disagreement between Thanh on the one hand and Phuong, Linh, and Huy on the other. Specifically, Thanh maintains that men actually suffer more than women because, as he says initially in line 300, they must endure bitterness (chịu cảnh cay đắng). After the other participants question this, Thanh reveals his reason for saying it. The bitterness he means is that which is directed towards a man by a woman whose affections are not reciprocated.Footnote ¹⁰

1. (10) VNR_05

   296 Phuong: Nhưng mà anh có thấy là- à- à- nữ   khổ  hơn  nam không

   But    eb  q see is    woman suffer more than man q?

   ‘But you agree that women suffer more than men right?’

   297 Thanh: Khổ  hơn  nhiều chứ, rất  nhiều thứ

   Suffer more, many tfp, very many things

   ‘Suffer more, much eh? Very many things’

   298 Linh: Bản thân  sinh ra đã  khổ  hơn  rồi

   Oneself  born  pst suffer more already

   ‘Women suffer more by birth.’

   299 Thanh: Nhưng mà thật ra như nam cũng khổ nhiều hơn nữa

   But     actually  man also suffer many more again

   ‘But actually men suffer more than women’

   300  Bơi vì  nam toàn phải chịu  cảnh cay  đắng thôi

   Because men only must endure state spicy bitter only

   ‘Because only men must endure bitterness’

   301 Linh: Chả đâu vào đâu. Toàn cay đắng rượu chè, bia bọt ế

   Talking nonsense. All bitterness alcohol to excess beer stale

   ‘What nonsense. Just the bitterness that comes from drinking too       much beer!’

   302 Phuong: Ừ

   intj

   ‘Right!’

   303 Linh: Thuốc   lá,  thuốc   liếc Footnote ⁹

   Medicine leaf, medicine shmeath

   ‘Tobacco, shmotaco’

   304 Huy: Cay đắng thì  ai chả có,  trai hay gái đều thế

   Bitterness then who all  have, boy or  girl equal

   ‘Everybody experiences bitterness, boy or girl doesn't matter’

   305 Thanh: Không, nhưng mà nam nhà mình thì phải chịu đựng nhiều hơn

   neg,   but    man   self   must endure hold many more

   ‘No, but men like us must suffer more’

   (six lines omitted)

   314  Nam thì cũng khổ

   Man   also suffer.

   ‘Men also suffer.’

   315 Khổ  là chỗ là các cô   nhiều khi  cũng là mê nhiều

   Suffer comp place comp pl woman many when also cop fond much

   ‘Suffering in a way because many girls are fond of them.’

Thanh's account of relative suffering is apparently tongue in cheek. What is interesting here is that the basic ontological assumptions, introduced through the generic referential expression nam ‘male’ and nữ ‘female’, are never questioned by the participants. The discussion that follows Thanh's opening salvo concerns whether or not men indeed suffer more than women and not whether such a distinction has merit, whether it can serve as the basis for further generalization and argumentation. The essentially ontological matter – that the human world is divisible into these two parts—introduced via the generic referential expression is rolled into the ensuing discussion as its fundamental presupposition.Footnote ¹¹

That this is treated as a basic aspect of social ontology—pertaining to ‘human kinds’—can be seen when we compare it with any number of other distinctions that Vietnamese people routinely make. For instance, people distinguish between một mí ‘single eyelid’ and hai mí ‘double eyelid’ (i.e. the Vietnamese ontology of eyelids includes these two possibilities) but this distinction is not part of a larger social ontology pertaining to kinds of persons.Footnote ¹²

ON REGIONAL STEREOTYPES

Let us now consider a final, more complex case in which the participants turn to discuss persons from several provinces of Central Vietnam, most prominently Nghệ An and Thanh Hoá (see Figure 1). This topic is again introduced by Thanh, the oldest member of the group. Earlier, the participants, all of whom live in Hanoi, have been talking about Ho Chi Minh City, which they agree offers better and cheaper options for both karaoke and dining out. With respect to this topic of conversation, Thanh has the most expertise having lived and worked in the southern city for several years in the past. More proximately, the discussion has turned to the topic of vegetable sellers and specifically the disagreeable attitude of some venders who sell their goods in stalls on the street.

Figure 1.

Map of Vietnam showing provinces and cities discussed by the participants.

In (11) below, Thanh (line 711) links these two previous topics (HCMC and disagreeable vegetable sellers) together by suggesting that, ‘In my opinion, you are unlikely to find yourself in that situation down there’. But Thanh immediately follows up with the caveat, ‘Unless you go to the areas full of people from Nghệ An and Hà Tĩnh’.

1. (11) VNR_05

   709 Thanh: Riêng   ở   trong kia   sẽ   khó

   In my opinion LOC in   DIS FUT difficult

   ‘In my opinion, you are unlikely’

   710  mà   gặp những cảnh   ấy

   COMP meet PL   situations PROX

   ‘to find yourself in that situation down there’

   711  Trừ khi là về   mấy vùng toàn người Nghệ An, Hà Tĩnh

   Unless COP return some parts full person Nghệ An, Hà Tĩnh

   ‘Unless you go to the areas full of people from Nghệ An and Hà Tĩnh’

   713 Phuong:  Người Nghệ An trong đấy ấy   à

   Person Nghệ An in  there PROX TFP

   ‘It's mostly people from Nghệ An around there?’

   714 Thanh:  Nói chung là nó- nói chung  là nó đỡ hơn

   Say general is 3  say general is 3  better

   ‘Generally speaking they- Generally, they are not as bad’

   715  nhưng mà vẫn rất có vẻ rất là    láo  láo nhá

   but   still very seem very COMP insolent TFP

   ‘but still they seem very insolent, you know?’

The expression used here, người Nghệ An, denotes a class of people—not some particular group of people from Nghệ An. What makes this reference generic is, in part, the absence of plural and deictic marking. To talk about some particular group of people from Nghệ An one would need to say something along the lines of:

1. (12) Những người đến  từ Nghệ An đó

   pl  person come from Nghệ An dis

   ‘Those people from Nghệ An’

In contrast, người Nghệ An means something like ‘the Nghệ An-ese’ which is to say, a group of people construed as a natural kind.Footnote ¹³ The generic reference here allows for further generalization, a filling out of the characteristics of the persons so designated and this, in turn, provides a basis upon which to build interactional alignment between the participants as all, mostly, converge in their expressed opinion.

But in advance of discussing these matters in more detail, we should note that the distinctions being made here, along with the social ontology that they point to, have a very long history. The area of Vietnam that makes up the contemporary provinces of Nghệ An and Thanh Hóa is collectively known as Thanh-Nghệ, while the provinces of Nghệ An and Hà Tĩnh are together known as Nghệ Tĩnh. As historian Keith Taylor (Reference Taylor1998) notes, the people attached to these place names are often understood in relation to ‘timeless categories’ and ‘regional stereotypes’. In attempting to soften ‘the coherencies of historicized regions and nations’, Taylor (Reference Taylor1998:955) considers episodes of conflict in which, at the beginning of the eleventh century for instance, royal armies were sent to wage war on the ‘the inhabitants of what are now the provinces of Vĩnh Phúc, Thanh Hóa and Nghệ An’. At that time, Lý Công Uẩn (founder of the Lý dynasty) explained that he ‘could not refrain from attacking the people of Nghệ An because they “did not honour civilizing instructions”’ (Taylor Reference Taylor1998:955).Footnote ¹⁴ Taylor goes on to consider the drawn out conflict between the Mạc and Lê dynasties, which he suggests is ‘nearly invisible behind the historiographical screen of resistance to Ming rule during the first three decades of the fifteenth century’. For instance, although Lê Lợi (1384–1433, reign 1428–1433) today figures as a national hero, according to Taylor, his anti-Ming campaigns can be read as a conquest of Đông Kinh by Thanh-Nghệ, ‘with the Ming perceived by many Đông Kinh worthies as protectors against the rustics of the southern provinces’.Footnote ¹⁵ So, these ontological distinctions—between ‘them’ from rural Thanh-Nghệ and ‘us’ from urban Hanoi (Đông Kinh)—reach back well into the fifteenth century.

The other aspect of this, which is invoked by Thanh's suggestion that you are unlikely to meet a huckster in Saigon unless, in fact, they are actually from one of these rural provinces, is the spectre of ungoverned movement. In his rich discussion of urbanization and development at the fringes of Ho Chi Minh City, Erik Harms (Reference Harms2011:204) notes that the continuous movement of people confounds ‘the notion that rational urbanization requires separation and ordered interaction, a relationship of exchange, but not one of mixing, such that country and city must interact in a carefully ordered division of labor that is based on the maintenance of difference’. His interlocutors, much like Thanh here, insist that they can distinguish an immigrant from the countryside, even if he or she is dressed in proper urban attire (Harms Reference Harms2011:214, see also Reyes Reference Reyes2017).

As Harms (Reference Harms2011:215) puts it, ‘country mouse is pure when he stays home in the country. But in Ho Chi Minh City, when the mouse moves from the country to the city, he turns into a rat’.Footnote ¹⁶

Returning to the conversation between Thanh, Huy, Phuong, and Linh we can observe that there are various ways in which these participants build out the stereotype from the initial generic reference. First, consider the way that, once reference is established, both Linh and Thanh find supporting evidence in the fact that other persons act on the basis of similar if not identical assumptions about the people from Nghệ An, Thanh Hoá, and Hà Tĩnh. Linh, for instance, notes that, when recruiting new workers, many employers indicate that they will not take people from Thanh Hoá.

1. (13) VNR_05

   718  Linh: Nhiều những chỗ  họ  tuyển người,

   Many pl place they recruit people,

   ‘Many places, when they are recruiting’

   719 họ  ghi thẳng ra cái bảng là không tuyển người Thanh Hoá

   they write straight out the board cop neg  recruit people Thanh Hoá

   ‘They write on the board they will not take people from Thanh Hoá’

   And Thanh has a similar anecdote in (14).

2. (14) VNR_05

   752 Thanh: Ở trong kia đúng thật là rất nhiều mấy ông sếp của anh nhá

   LOC in there true real COMP very many some GF boss POSS EB TFP

   ‘Down there it's also true that many of my superiors’

   753  Mấy ông bạn anh làm sếp to

   Some GF friends EB are boss big

   ‘Some of my older friends are big bosses’

   754  Tuyển người ông dặn thẳng là chỉ cần thấy là

   recruitment people GF instructed straight COMP only need see COP

   ‘Recruiters are told directly, only need to see that’

   755 Nghệ An, Thanh Hoá là loại ngay

   Nghệ An Thanh Hoá COMP reject immediately

   ‘it's a person from Nghệ An, Thanh Hoá - reject them immediately’

   756 Huy: Không cần hỏi.

   NEG need ask

   ‘No need to ask’

   757 Thanh: Không cần biết nó giỏi hay là sao

   NEG need know 3 good or COP bad

   ‘No need to know whether they are good or bad’

The value of such evidence lies, it seems, in its apparent ‘objectivity’—not only are these opinions reportedly shared broadly outside this particular group of conversationalists but moreover they serve as the basis for hiring decisions. This is, in other words, not a matter of personal like or dislike. Rather, Linh and Thanh imply, it is a matter of widely accepted ‘fact’ and real-world consequence.Footnote ¹⁷

By contrast, evidence from personal experience may also be offered to shore up generalizations built on the back of generic reference. For instance, in support of the co-participants’ shared assessment of people from these provinces, Huy offers an anecdote about his own uncle.

1. (15) VNR_05

   769  Huy: Bác đấy là bác trai. Còn bác dâu, gốc Thanh Hoá

   FEB there COP uncle and FEB bride origin Thanh Hoá

   ‘We have an uncle and uncle's wife is from Thanh Hoa’

   770  Vào chơi cả ngày không biết mặt bác ở đâu

   Enter play all day NEG know face FEBW is where

   ‘Spent the whole day there with them and never saw her face’

   771  Xuống ăn cơm xong lên luôn. Bác trai bây giờ nhiễm

   Descend eat, finished go up. FEB boy now infected.

   ‘She comes down to eat, finishes, goes back up. My uncle is now infected’

   772  Một năm, à mấy năm mới về quê một lần

   One year, uh few years just return home one time

   ‘Over a year, a few years, he only came home one time’

   773  Giỗ bố thì gọi điện bảo là mai

   Death anniversary father, TOP call phone say COMP tomorrow

   ‘On my father's death anniversary, he called saying tomorrow’

   774  sẽ về Xong là đến gần lúc ăn cơm

   FUT come home Done come close time eat

   ‘I'll come home. It comes almost time to eat’

   775 gọi thế đã về chưa thì bảo là có việc bận mất rồi

   call PST return yet, TOP say COMP have work busy take already

   ‘we called to ask if he'd arrived yet, he said he was busy with work’

Whereas Thanh and Linh's evidence is objective in as much as its supposed source lies outside this group of participants, Huy's narrative here is markedly subjective and incorporates his own affective stance towards persons from Thanh Hoá. More specifically, in Huy's story, the characteristics of the people of Thanh Hoá are cast as contagion. Huy's uncle is married to a woman from the region and her behavior lines up with this group's assumptions. Specifically, she is characterized as selfish and anti-social, only descending from the house to eat with others and then, immediately upon finishing, hurrying back into some private part of the home that can't be accessed by guests. Now, says Huy, his own uncle has been ‘infected’. This is evidenced by the fact that when the family held the death anniversary for Huy's father, the uncle never showed up, claiming by way of an excuse, that he was busy with work. Clearly, the crimes of which Huy's uncle and aunt are guilty are not minor matters. Hospitality, demonstrated by a warm and welcoming attitude towards a guest, is more than an expectation, it is a defining feature of stereotyped Kinh culture understood from within. In other words, Huy saying that his aunt did not welcome him into her house is close to saying that she did not act Vietnamese. And what of the uncle? After promising to attend the death anniversary of his brother and Huy's father, he did not show up thereby forcing the family to call and ascertain his whereabouts. His excuse involved citing work obligations and, in this way, prioritized employment and money above filial piety and ritual commitments. In sum, these diacritics of regional stereotype position the persons referred to at the very margins of Kinh culture and ethnic belonging. People from Thanh Hoá are cast as the ‘others within’ (see Thongchai Reference Winichakul and Turton2000).

As was the case for the generic formulation of ‘man’ and ‘woman’ once the reference to the entity is established, the ensuing discussion tends only to presuppose the validity of the underlying distinctions (the ontological assumptions about kinds upon which generic references are premised). This is true even of talk that otherwise raises questions about what the class of entities is like or how it got that way. In the case examined here, for instance, at one point, Phuong seeks confirmation from Thanh as to whether people from the region really do have typical characteristics. When Thanh answers in the affirmative suggesting that the present-day characteristics are rooted in ancient times and custom, Phuong pursues that matter further asking why these people are the way they are, that is, seeking some kind of causal account.

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   727  Phuong: Chắc nó cũng có  đặc trưng   thật. Anh nhể

   Sure 3 also have characteristic real. eb  tfp

   ‘I guess they do have their typical characteristics. Right?’

   (two lines omitted)

   730  Thanh: Đặc trưng   từ- từ thời ngày xưa mà

   Characteristic since  time day old tfp

   ‘These are characteristics from ancient times for sure.’

   (three lines omitted)

   734  Thanh: Em biết  ngày xưa từ  thời mà Trịnh Nguyễn ấy

   ys  know day  old from time   Trinh Nguyen dis

   ‘You know from ancient times of Trinh Nguyen’

   735  hay là   từ  thời  các  triều  trước ấy

   or,  comp from time  pl  dynasty before dis

   ‘or, from the times of the earlier dynasties’

   736 muốn  lấy  lính  để lật đổ   triêu đại nọ,

   wanted take troops to overthrow dynasty dis

   ‘when someone wants to overthrow the dynasty’

   737  triều đại kia, toàn về   xứ   Thanh,

   dynasty dis, entire return region Thanh

   ‘the other dynasties, they come to the region of Thanh’

   738 xứ   Nghệ để lấy  lính

   region Nghệ to take soldiers

   ‘or the region of Nghệ to recruit soldiers.’

   739  Huy: Tuý

   Depends

   ‘Depends’

   740  Thanh: Thật

   True

   ‘No, it's true!’

   741  Phuong: Sao lại xấu tính   thế nhể. Do   hoàn cảnh sống à

   Why  bad character tfp tfp. Reason conditions live tfp

   ‘Why are they such bad people? Due to living conditions perhaps?’

   742 Khó khăn à

   Tough  tfp

   ‘Difficult, right?’

   743  Thanh: Do   cái đất

   Reason cl land

   ‘Because of the land’

   744  Phuong: Hay do  long  mạch

   Or reason dragon veins

   ‘Or because of subterranean vectors of spiritual power’

   745  Thanh: Có thể lắm

   Can  much

   ‘Probably’

   746  Huy: Mình chưa đi sâu  nghiên cứu nên chưa biết là cái gì ((…))

   Self  yet  go deep research   so yet know what

   ‘The research has not been done and so we can't know what the cause is’

   747  Linh: Nhưng mà cái tinh thần cái kiểu như là địa phương gì

   But    cl spirit   cl style like cop  locality

   ‘But that's the spirit of the region’

   748  Đi đâu  nó cũng ấy vời nhau.   Kinh hồn

   Go where 3 also tfp with each other. Terrifying

   ‘Wherever they go, they stick together. Terrifying!’

   749  Phuong: Nó bảo vệ,  bao che cho  nhau. khiếp

   3  protects, defend each other. Fearful

   ‘They protect and defend one another. Frightening!’

We can see here that Thanh first invokes history, citing the Trịnh-Nguyễn wars (1627–1672) during which time the region provided a human reserve from which to enlist soldiers. Keying to the ambiguities of ‘them’ and ‘us’ which run through this period for contemporary Kinh (Taylor Reference Taylor1998), Thanh avoids saying directly who did the recruiting of which he speaks.Footnote ¹⁸ It is enough apparently to note that the people of this region made the best soldiers. After Huy expresses some doubt (line 739, tuý ‘depends’), Phuong presses on. Her ‘because of living conditions’ is treated by Thanh as pointing to the importance of ecology and physical geography (line 743). And her subsequent invocation of long mạch links the stereotyped characteristics of the people to underground circuits of power in this way accounting perhaps for their assumed timeless and essential nature.Footnote ¹⁹

Finally, when Huy suggests that the coparticipants can't know the cause because the research has not yet been done (which of course accepts all the previous presuppositions about these people which have been detailed in the preceding conversation), Linh attempts to summarize what has been said by suggesting that there is a discernable tinh thần ‘spirit’ or kiểu ‘style’ of the people of this region which leads them to stick together. And she adds the final evaluation kinh hồn, which one dictionary defines as ‘to be frightened out of one's wits’. Phuong caps this part of the discussion off with a paired utterance which replicates the grammatical structure of Linh's just prior turn, punctuating her completion with the evaluative term khiếp ‘frightening’. We can conclude this section by noting that, while such talk about the causal factors that led to the people having the characteristics they are assumed to have point to historical, sociological, and even spiritual contingencies, they do not challenge the underlying presuppositions upon which acts of generic reference to types or classes of people rest. In other words, the participants in this conversation seem assured that, regardless of how they got to be that way, persons from the area of Nghệ An and neighboring provinces of Thanh Hoá and Hà Tĩnh share a set of essential characteristics which differentiate them from others, most notably from the present co-participants.

When a social category is essentialized—linked to a set of beliefs about ‘an almost substance-like entity that pervades its insides, and which causally grounds its more stable and enduring properties’ (Leslie Reference Leslie, Knobe, Lombrozo and Nichols2014:211; see also Gelman Reference Gelman2003)—it is amplified by the determinate content which is imposed upon it.Footnote ²⁰ That is to say, essentialized social categories such as the ones discussed here, do not serve merely as particular ‘kinds’ within a larger social ontology. Instead, they provide the dramatis personae—the cast of characters whose essentialized, and thus knowable, motivations, ways of thinking, and modes of action give the world its teleological coherence.

A final set of observations has to do with what these generic references afford, what kinds of subsequent action and characterization they allow for. One prominent possibility here is the rhematic linking of accent or dialect to personal character (see Irvine & Gal Reference Irvine, Gal and Kroskrity2000). This region is well known for its distinctive dialect(s). Taylor (Reference Taylor1998:955) writes, ‘even today the language spoken in the southern part of Thanh Nghệ, the so-called Nghệ Tĩnh (Nghệ An and Hà Tĩnh) dialect, is closer to Mường than to Kinh’. Alves & Nguyễn (Reference Alves, Nguyễn, Alves, Sidwell and Gil2007) have described some of the regional dialect diversity focusing on the specific variety spoken in the district of Thanh Chương in the western hills of Nghệ An. This highly conservative dialect is distinguished from the Vietnamese of Hà Nội and Sài Gòn in its phonological characteristics (it has twenty-four consonants whereas the Vietnamese of Hà Nội has twenty due to various mergers) and its lexicon, which includes many Vietic and Mon-Khmer words not found in the urban varieties of the language.Footnote ²¹

And so it should come as no surprise to find that the participants eventually turn to consider the matter of accent (or giọng ‘voice’). Thanh, for instance, suggests that the accent of the people of Nghệ An reveals their insolence.

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   759  Thanh: Nghệ An ấy. Anh nghe cái giọng của bọn nó,

   Nghệ An DIS. EB hear CL voice POSS group 3

   ‘Nghệ An there! I hear the dialect of those people’

   760  Nó cứ láo láo làm sao ấy. Thật. Láo láo xấc xấc nữa cơ

   3 just insolent how DIS. True. Insolent insolence more TFP

   ‘Wow, just insolent. Truly insolent’

And, after Huy admits he doesn't mind the accent of those from Hà Tĩnh, Phuong subjects the various regional accents to grading, suggesting that she prefers that of Thanh Hoá to that of Nghệ An (Carruthers Reference Carruthers2017). The charge of ‘insolence’ (xấc xấc cf. xấc xược, láo láo cf. láo xược) seems to imply a willful refusal to speak urban or official varieties of the language and for Thanh, at least, use of this dialect presumably alludes to centuries of resistance to the centralized authority of Động Kinh, a theme he invoked earlier in his response to Phuong.Footnote ²²