A DISCURSIVE COMMENT ON THE PAST-ORIENTATION IN VIETNAMESE VERBAL COMMUNICATION

Abstract

Cultures in the world have three orientations to time, namely, present - oriented, future-oriented and past-oriented cultures. The Vietnamese seem to belong to the 3^rd one. In this orientation, the people tend to use a big repertoire of words and expressions containing connotations  and  presuppositions  of  the  “past”.  Moreover,  in  speech,  they  also  use  many ways  of  producing  their  discourse  in  which  the  “past”  factors  usually  exist.   It  is  because they often think of the “past” time unconsciously.