Expressions of the Self in Vietnam: Usage of ‘I’ throughout Literature in nôm and in quốc ngữ

The modern Western world as the matrix for the individual has been a widely accepted theory among the general public as well as in the areas of social and human sciences. Recently, however, extensive work in various fields—linguistics, literature, history, philosophy and anthropology—has adopted a new approach to research in areas beyond simplistic Western ideas based on binary distinctions; for instance, individualism versus holism, or the West versus the Orient. This paper aims to contribute to this new area of research by offering an overview of the development of the Self and the linguistic manifestations of ‘I’ in Vietnamese literary works.