Ye, Zhengdao (2004). The Chinese folk model of facial expressions: A linguistic perspective. Culture & Psychology, 10(2), 195-222. DOI: 10.1177/1354067X04040928
This study provides much-anticipated information on how facial expressions are perceived and interpreted by people from a non-Western culture by undertaking a detailed, culture-specific case study of their linguistic representations in the Chinese language. It shows that linguistic representations of facial expressions, which represent a local facial encoding system, provide valuable resources with which researchers can obtain a culture-internal view of the perceptions and conceptions of the face.
A folk model of facial expressions characteristic of the Chinese people is revealed through systematic documentation and linguistic analyses of set phrases for describing facial expressions drawn from Hongloumeng, the most popular and important literary work in the Chinese language. This folk model, which shows a way of seeing and thinking about facial expressions that is not commonly reflected in the English language, and is yet most natural to the Chinese people, questions the methodological assumptions underpinning the current dominant paradigm in research of the ‘universals’ of the human face, and highlights the force of culture and folk theories in scientific research programs. It also demonstrates the usefulness and viability of a linguistic perspective and methodology, in particular the cross-cultural semantic theory of the Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM), for a theory of linguistic representations of facial expressions and emotions across cultures.
Explications are provided for the following phrases: mu deng kou dai (‘eyes wide open with strength, mouth dumbstruck’), tu/shen shetou (‘put out/stretch one’s tongue’), mei fei se wu (‘eyebrows fly, facial expression dances’).
Research carried out in consultation with or under the supervision of one or more experienced NSM practitioners
