Tag: (S) insiders and outsiders

(2013) Chinese (Mandarin) – ‘Old friend’

Ye, Zhengdao (2013). Understanding the conceptual basis of the ‘old friend’ formula in Chinese social interaction and foreign diplomacy: A cultural script approach. Australian Journal of Linguistics, 33, 365-385. DOI: 10.1080/07268602.2013.846459

This study attempts to make sense of a Chinese diplomatic formula – calling or labelling one’s counterpart 中国人民的老朋友 zhōngguó rénmín de lăopéngyŏu  (‘an old friend of the Chinese people’) – by unravelling its conceptual basis. It shows that this formula has deep roots in Chinese social practices, and that its use is governed by a web of intrinsically linked cultural scripts. The paper articulates these scripts in terms of the culture-independent Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM), unveiling the cultural logic underlying the use of the expression and revealing the culturally distinctive Chinese way of categorizing and conceptualizing ‘friend’, which is different from the Anglophone way. On the one hand, the paper shows the crucial role that language plays in managing interpersonal relationships by Chinese speakers; on the other, it contributes to a deeper understanding of the conceptual foundations of Chinese diplomatic style, illustrating how formulaic language in diplomacy highlights aspects of social cognition that are fundamental to the speakers of a community, and therefore deserving more attention than has hitherto been the case.


Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners

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(2014) Chinese (Mandarin) – Opposites

Ye, Zhengdao (2014). Opposites in language and thought: A Chinese perspective. In Gabriella Rundblad, Aga Tytus, Olivia Knapton, & Chris Tang (Eds.), Selected papers from the 4th UK Cognitive Linguistics Conference (pp. 284-302). London: UK Cognitive Linguistics Association. PDF (open access)

There is a strong view held by many semanticists that ‘oppositeness’ is lexically embodied in every language. This suggests that antonymous thought may be an inherent feature of human cognition. However, in the available literature on the sense relations of opposites, most of the analyses in English focus on adjectives, in particular gradable adjectives. How ‘oppositeness of meaning’ is actually construed by speakers from other languages and cultures, in particular by those from non-Indo-European languages, has largely been unexplored.

This paper fills the gap by providing a Chinese language perspective. It first illustrates the critical role opposites play in the word and conceptual formation in Chinese. It then offers a fined-grained case analysis of two pairs of culturally salient complementary noun opposites designating social categories as a way of gaining insight into varied construals and conceptualizations of the nature of ‘oppositeness of meaning’.

A central methodological concern is how culturally distinctive ways of thinking about the relationships between the two members of a complementary pair can be reflected and captured. The paper proposes that the Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM), in particular its ‘cultural scripts’ theory branch, provides a possible solution. Related methodological issues discussed in the paper include subtypes of complementary opposites, cultural scripts vs. logical formulation, the issue of markedness, and the role of culture in the semantics of Chinese opposites.


Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners

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