The influence of cultural values on the choice of lexical euphemisms in Chinese and Russian informal communication

Abstract

The article explores the influence of cultural values on the choice of lexical euphemisms in Chinese and Russian informal communication, going beyond the reduction of euphemization to the universal principle of politeness and interpreting it as a socio-cultural strategy reflecting the axiological attitudes and communicative ideals of communities. The aim of the work is to identify the cultural and philosophical foundations of euphemistic systems and demonstrate how the Confucian collectivist matrix of China and the Russian model with a high value of sincerity and emotional openness form different speech practices. The methodology combines linguocultural, hermeneutical, comparative sociological and discourse analytical approaches; comparative and conceptual analysis of key categories ( politeness , face , harmony , sincerity , fate ) is applied on the basis of spontaneous dialogues, ethnographic records and Internet communication arrays with a thematic selection of taboo areas (death, illnesses, finances, conflicts, physiology, intimacy). The results show that in Chinese culture, euphemism acts as a preventive tool for protecting the face (miànzi) and maintaining social harmony (héxié), providing indirection, depersonalization and smoothing out potential contradictions even in informal communication. In Russian communication, euphemization is more situational and emotionally oriented, competing with directness, irony and deminutives as ways of mitigation, where personal sincerity and regulation of psychological distance are more important. Russian russians compare thematic domains to reveal persistent differences: metaphors of death in Chinese (e.g., zu liǎo, guīxī liǎo) de-dramatize an event as a transition, while Russian nominations fluctuate between sacred drama and slightly ironic expressions; diseases in Chinese discourse are referred to generically ( body is uncomfortable ), and in Russian more specifically, but softer due to expression and deminutives. The analysis of rejection strategies, criticism, and descriptions of financial difficulties confirms the determinative role of the collectivism-individualism opposition in choosing the degree of indirection and the distribution of responsibility between the individual and circumstances. The discussion reinforces the conclusion: Chinese euphemization is a social technology for maintaining order and hierarchy, while Russian is a means of empathy, self-irony and emotional coordination of meaning without necessarily veiling the facts. The practical significance lies in improving the effectiveness of intercultural communication, in the teaching methodology of RCT /CCI, translation and corporate regulations, and the limitations are related to the representativeness of the corpus and online bias, which requires expanding the samples and involving quantitative psycholinguistic procedures in future research.