THE LEXIS OF BUSINESS CHINESE LANGUAGE: SEMANTIC DESCRIPTION

Abstract

Business Chinese is a tool for trade and economic cooperation between Russia and China. During such interaction the lexical choice problem depending on the circumstances of a specific communication situation comes to the fore. This article deals with the business Chinese special words as a part of the lexical system of business Chinese. The author attempts to integrate Russian and Chinese researchers’ approaches to the classification of business vocabulary. The main kinds of word formation are described for words from the second part of the “List of the common business Chinese words”. 1422 words from the second part of the “List” became the subject of content analysis in order to determine the frequency of usage and relative frequency for word-formation elements. The author provides some ways of synonymic and antonymic rows formation, illustrates the specificity of polysemy and homonymy in business Chinese. The stylistic features of such special words as terms, neologisms, loan words, clichés, elements of Classical Chinese (wenyan), formulas of politeness, euphemisms are analyzed. This paper reflects the main trends in the development of business Chinese lexical system: the evolution of the words’ content plane in terms of words transition from the sphere of business communication to the wide usage and vice versa. The subject field of “entrepreneurial activity” is presented in the form of a frame system that makes it possible to model the sequence of word usage in business communication. The lexical choice in business Chinese is made by native speakers considering stylistic differentiation of words according to the status of the addresser and the addressee.