Problems of linguistics in the 21st century in Russian and Chinese

Yuan Yue

This study examines the linguistic means of superstition expression in Russian and Chinese cultures. The main task was to identify Russian and Chinese oral expressions containing superstitions and beliefs for good luck of different types, and to analyze them in terms of semantics, structure and functioning. The study was based on a written survey of 50 Russian and 27 Chinese students, the purpose of the study was to identify the most popular omens and superstitions in the Russian and Chinese cultures and to determine the level of "superstition" of the respondent. As a result, a corpus of 358 Russian and 185 Chinese superstitions was obtained, which can serve as the basis for a dictionary of modern superstitions. A comprehensive linguistic analysis of Russian and Chinese superstitions was conducted. The data from the Russian National Corpus (ruscorpora.ru), explanatory dictionaries and material from a number of other researchers were also used. The results showed that superstitions in Russian and Chinese can be divided into 12 thematic groups, but within these groups superstitious beliefs do not coincide or coincide partially: the key word of a superstition (for example, a mirror) may be the same, but the actions (events) associated with it are different in Russian and Chinese cultures; some of them have the same general premise, but opposite beliefs and predictions; some superstitions are presented only in one of the languages and have no analogues in the second. The differences between Russian and Chinese superstitions can be explained by the influence of different cultural and linguocultural factors.

Keywords:analysis, methods, Russia, China, study.