This paper explores the conceptual basis of Chinese social organization, and examines how the fundamental Chinese categories of interpersonal relationships a¨ect Chinese ways of speaking and social interaction. Firstly, the paper will analyze the full meanings and interrelationship of two of the most distinctive (complementary) dyads of Chinese social categories, namely, she Ångre Ân (lit.``uncooked person'',``stranger'') vs. shu  re Ân (lit.`c ooked person'',``an old acquaintance''), and zõ Ájõ AEre Ân (lit.``oneself person'',``insider'') vs. wa Áire Ân (lit.``outer/outsider person'',``outsider''). It will then put forward two master scriptsÐgeneral principles underlying norms of social interactionÐin Chinese culture that are governed by the demarcations of these fundamental categories: ne Áiwa Áiyo AE ubie  (``di¨erence between the insider and outsider'') and yo  ushu Å zhõ Áqõ Ån (``from far to close''), and illustrate aspects of Chinese language use that are guided by these principles. They include da AE zha Åohu (``greetings''), the use of to  ng X (``fellow X'') and la AEo X (``old X''), and a brief discussion of the value of not being polite in Chinese culture. On the one hand, this paper demonstrates the need for treating interpersonal relationships as a theoretical variable in the study of human interaction and shows the importance of an indigenous perspective; on the other, it relates theoretical discussion of human interaction to practical needs of understanding Chinese interactional style for the purpose of language teaching and political and commercial negotiations. Both goals can be attained by the use of the Natural Semantic Metalanguage and``cultural scripts'' theory.

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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, culturespecific 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.

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