LINGUISTIC AND CULTURAL FEATURES OF WEDDING ETIQUETTE IN RUSSIAN AND CHINESE CUSTOMS

Introduction. The article is devoted to a comparative description of the Russian and Chinese wedding ceremonies as a form of manifestation of national traditional culture. The aspect of material consideration is a comparative linguoculturological aspect, involving the identification of common and different features in the fragments of the national picture of the world associated with the traditional mass idea of Russians and Chinese about weddings, wedding ritual actions, wedding etiquette. This approach is relevant for the modern linguistic paradigm, cognitive-discursive and anthropocentric in nature.The purpose of the article is to identify the invariant and variant features in the ideas about the wedding ceremony, which is typical of the traditional Russian and Chinese folk cultures.Methods and material. The material is linguistic markers of the conceptualization of these representations – verbal and super-word (idiomatic) linguistic units denoting the realities of the wedding ritual. Methodological analysis procedures define as a key method of linguoculturological commentary, which makes it possible to identify thesaurus gaps, fill them (which is extremely important for a bearer of an inauthentic culture and a foreign language) and, taking into account the cultural and historical context, interpret the semantics of linguistic representatives of the nuclear meaning “wedding ceremony”.Results and discussion. It was found that in the Russian and Chinese mass traditional ideas about the wedding ceremony, there are general (invariant, universal for any linguistic culture) and variant (actualized within the framework of a specific linguistic culture, having a discursive (historical, cultural, context-event and communicative-situational) conditionality) features... The universal semantic signs in the interpretation of the wedding ceremony among the Russian and Chinese ethnoses are universal human significant axiological meanings: a wedding is the result and proof of the love of a man and a woman, their desire to live together, trusting and helping each other. The connotative component of universal meanings is positive, approving.Variant meanings and their representation in a particular linguoculture are characterized by the specifics of their content. In particular, it has been proven that the etiquette component is significant for the interpretation of the wedding ceremony in the Russian and Chinese ethnic groups. The set of moral and ethical rules that have existed for a long time in society also determines the understanding of ritualized actions, which include the wedding ceremony. So, in relation to Russian culture, the desire to seal the bonds of marriage “in heaven”, having secured the blessing of the church, is noted as a feature of originality. In Chinese traditional culture, the presence of the motive of worship is emphasized as a thread connecting all the stages and structural components of the wedding ceremony. In both linguocultures, the family, clan, and elders are revered.In conclusion, it is noted that the use of linguoculturological analysis is promising for comparing cultural and linguistic facts from the life of ethnic groups that differ in worldview, way of life, moral and ethical principles

cultural linguistics, cultural linguistics commentary, Russian worldview, Chinese worldview, wedding etiquette, wedding ceremony, idiom