Study of cultural factors and pragmatic misunderstandings in oral communication in Russian and Chinese

this study focuses on examining cultural factors and pragmatic misunderstandings in oral communication in Russian and Chinese. The research considers the influence of culture-specific features on the occurrence of communicative failures in intercultural communication. The methodological basis of the study is a comprehensive approach that includes elements of discourse analysis, conversational analysis, and linguistic pragmatics. The empirical base consists of audio recordings of 50 dialogues between native speakers of Russian and Chinese with a total duration of 15 hours. The analysis revealed that the most frequent causes of misunderstandings are differences in politeness strategies (48% of cases), mismatched cultural presuppositions (35%), and divergences in the interpretation of non-verbal signals (27%). It was found that Russian-speaking participants tend to a more straightforward communication style (d=0.76, p<0.01), while Chinese interlocutors more often resort to indirect speech acts (d=0.68, p<0.01). The study's results contribute to understanding the cultural-pragmatic foundations of cross-linguistic interaction and open up prospects for developing methods to enhance the effectiveness of Russian-Chinese communication.

oral communication, the Russian language, the Chinese language, cultural factors, pragmatic misunderstandings, intercultural communication, politeness, presuppositions, non-verbal communication