HEORETICAL AND METHODOLOGICAL BASIS OF COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS OF YOUTH SLANG IN CHINESE AND RUSSIAN

Abstract

This article examines the theoretical and methodological foundations of a comparative study of contemporary youth slang in Chinese and Russian. In the context of rapid digitalization, the expansion of social media, and intensified intercultural communication, youth slang has become one of the most dynamic layers of contemporary language. The study treats slang not merely as informal vocabulary but as a complex linguistic phenomenon associated with group identity, social positioning, emotional evaluation, communicative economy, cultural representation, and linguistic creativity. Particular attention is paid to the typological differences between Chinese and Russian and to the ways in which these differences affect slang formation. In Chinese digital discourse, such mechanisms as homophonic substitution, numerical coding, pinyin abbreviation, graphic metaphorization, borrowing, semantic reinterpretation, and memetic transformation are especially productive. Russian youth discourse demonstrates a high degree of morphological flexibility, particularly in the adaptation of English borrowings through phonetic integration, suffixation, prefixation, clipping, semantic shift, and derivational expansion. The methodological framework combines contrastive analysis, linguocultural analysis, componential semantic analysis, derivational analysis, discourse analysis, and corpus-oriented observation. The empirical material consists of contemporary linguistic units occurring in Chinese- and Russian-language digital communication. The analysis focuses on examples such as 520, 996, awsl, yyds, 囧, тильт, рофлить, зашерить, скуф, душнить, 内卷 and 躺平. The findings indicate that the two slang systems share several communicative motivations, including economy of expression, emotional intensification, playfulness, group identification, and adaptation to digital media. At the same time, these common motivations receive different linguistic realizations because of the structural and cultural properties of the two languages. The proposed methodological framework may be used for further comparative research into youth slang, Internet neologisms, and digital discourse in typologically different languages.

Keywords

youth slang, Internet slang, Chinese language, Russian language, comparative linguistics, contrastive analysis, linguoculturology, word formation, derivation, neologisms, Internet discourse, digital communication, sociolinguistics, language play, cultural code.