Cognitive-pragmatic features of euphemistic representation of poverty in the Russian and Uzbek languages

Abstract

The article offers a contrastive analysis of poverty-related euphemisms in Russian and Uzbek linguocultures within a cognitive-pragmatic framework. The relevance of the study stems from the sociocultural traumatic nature of economic deprivation and the ensuing need for verbal mitigation in postSoviet media discourse. The objective is to identify both universal and culture-specific strategies for conceptualising resource scarcity as shaped by institutional norms, cultural semiotics and discursive expectations. The findings indicate that in both language systems, the dominant motive is avoidance of linguistic discomfort, achieved through neutral bureaucratic constructions such as maloimushchiy ‘low-income’ and kam taminlangan ‘under-provided’. Institutional marking, however, diverges: the Russian euphemistic repertoire is generated mainly by legal instruments and media clichés, whereas the Uzbek set is grounded in a multi-tier state register system (temir daftariga kiritilgan ‘entered in the “iron notebook”’, ayollar daftariga kiritilgan ‘entered in the “women’s notebook”’, mehr daftariga kiritilgan‘entered in the “mercy notebook”’) and displays pronounced metaphorisation. Both languages employ a strategy of temporally framing poverty as a “difficult situation”; yet, Uzbek expressions more frequently indicate obligatory social support. Moreover, the Uzbek model shows a higher degree of imagery through culturally encoded metonymies, whereas Russian relies on financial terminology and grammatical variation (prepositions v ‘in’ / s ‘with’). The study thus reveals common cognitive mechanisms of euphemisation – mitigation and desemantisation of causality – while highlighting national-specific differences in institutional anchoring, metaphorical density and structural realisation of poverty euphemisms.