Phase one of the longitudinal study of Kobe women’s ethnographic interviews 1989–2019

This chapter introduces the first phase of the Longitudinal Study of Kobe Women’s Ethnographic Interviews 1989–2019, a real-time interdisciplinary study which examines changes in discourse of the same group of women in Japan. It explains the nature of the ethnographic interviews to be analysed and the merits of the multi-analytical discourse (MAD) approach for an interdisciplinary study like this. By locating it in the existing literature on language variation and changes, and on the Japanese women’s discourse, the chapter argues for the book’s innovative significance.