Semantization of Chinese Vocabulary in Russian-Language Media Texts of Belarus

The article attempts to characterize the ways Chinese words denoting realia are incorporated in Russian-language media texts and the methods used to describe the meanings of these words. The relevance of the research is determined, firstly, by the development of intercultural dialogue as a result of the intensification of international contacts in the global world, secondly, by the increasing importance of international journalism in the implementation of intercultural dialogue between partner countries, and thirdly, by the intensified penetration of Chineseisms into Russian speech mediated by media discourse. The purpose of this article is to identify and describe the main methods of Chinese vocabulary semantization, which are used by Belarusian media journalists when creating Russian-language media texts with different genre, thematic, and stylistic characteristics. The study draws on popular Belarusian websites texts published in the period from 2007 to 2024. The originality of the study lies in the fact that the vocabulary of Chinese origin presented in Russian-language texts of the Belarusian media is seen as a phenomenon of national Chinese culture; at the same time, the peculiarities of its use, including the character of semantization in the texts, are interpreted as professional creativity of Belarusian journalists who have a high level of knowledge of Russian as one of the state languages in Belarus. The author classifies widely used translation and non-translation methods of Chineseisms’ semantization into direct translation, back-translation, translation-interpretation, defining the meaning of a word, using contextual synonyms, using a word or word combination that represents a generic concept, etc. The combination of linguocultural and discourse analysis of specific contexts allows us to see the specifics of different ways of Chineseisms’ semantization in journalistic texts. It is shown that the discursive factors determining the journalist’s choice of a Chinese word semantization are the subject, genre and authorship of the text, also, the word’s belonging to a certain thematic group, and the word’s belonging to a certain part of the text that has its own functional load. An attempt is made to comprehend the method of a Chinese word semantization in the context of professional and creative tasks solved by journalists.