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Issue: Vol. 15 No. E (2026): Issue of Social Sciences and Humanities (English)
Section: Social Sciences and Humanities Issue (English)
DOI: 10.52714/dthu.ssh.3662.2059
Date Published: 21/09/2026
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Nguyen, Q. K. (2026). Constructing English as Employability Capital in Vietnam’s Digital Labour Market: A Corpus-Assisted Analysis of Proficiency, Credentials, and Workplace Tasks. Dong Thap University Journal of Science - Social Sciences and Humanities Issue, 15(E). https://doi.org/10.52714/dthu.ssh.3662.2059

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Constructing English as Employability Capital in Vietnam’s Digital Labour Market: A Corpus-Assisted Analysis of Proficiency, Credentials, and Workplace Tasks

Quoc Khanh Nguyen1,  
1 Center for Continuing Education, The University of Da Nang, Vietnam

Main Article Content

Abstract

This study examines how English is constructed as employability capital in Vietnam’s digital labour market. Using the publicly released VietJobs corpus, 48,092 online job advertisements were processed in Python. After 385 exact duplicate records were removed, 47,707 postings formed the labour-market denominator, and 9,061 postings containing direct English competence or credential requirements formed the principal analytical corpus. The analysis combined prevalence and sector comparisons with recurrent-pattern, keyness, credential, concordance, and workplace-task analyses. English demand appeared in 18.99% of unique postings and varied significantly across 16 occupational sectors. Most direct-English advertisements represented competence broadly through general proficiency or communication, while only 10.37% specified identifiable workplace tasks and 9.18% specified applicant-oriented English credentials. Education showed a strongly credential-oriented profile, including comparatively high IELTS and TOEIC thresholds, whereas engineering and information technology more often connected English to reading, technical documentation, and other workplace functions. Formal credentials and explicit workplace tasks rarely co-occurred, and credential-bearing advertisements remained less likely to specify workplace tasks after controlling for sector. The findings show that the labour-market value of English is differentiated by occupational context and by the form through which competence is represented, highlighting a distinction between credentialised and workplace-functional English competence.

Keywords

Corpus linguistics, employability, English language requirements, job advertisements, linguistic capital

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