Verbal identity of Russian and Chinese local brands

This article is devoted to the analysis of the linguistic and cultural features of the verbal identity of Russian and Chinese local brands. The relevance of the study is determined by the insufficiently researched aspect of Chinese urban branding, including in a comparative perspective, while the comparison of verbal elements of identity in Russian and Chinese cities will help to uncover patterns of encoding the natural-geographic, historical, economic-political, and national-cultural features within them. The aim of this work is to identify the similarities and differences in constructing the image and building the identity of Russian and Chinese cities through the verbal elements of their identity. Achieving this goal involves solving the following tasks: 1) conducting a theoretical review of scientific research in the field of studying local brands and city identity; 2) highlighting and analyzing the verbal elements of the identity of Russian and Chinese local brands; 3) identifying the similarities and differences in the representation of natural-geographic, historical, economic-political, and national-cultural features of Russia and China. The research methods used in this work are general scientific (observation, description, comparison, interpretation, generalization) and often scientific (lexical-semantic, stylistic, linguistic-cultural, linguistic-pragmatic). The material for the study consisted of verbal (slogan and promotional text) elements of the identity of Russian and Chinese local brands presented on internet sites. The scientific novelty of the study lies in the fact that it is the first comparative analysis of the verbal elements of the identity of Russian and Chinese cities, which represent local brands. It concludes that, despite the commonality of some strategies for encoding the symbolism of cities in their verbal identity, local brands of Russian and Chinese cities create fundamentally different models of urban identity that reflect the cultural codes of their peoples. Promising further research includes both verbal and non-verbal elements of the identity of Russian and Chinese local brands, which serve as mirrors of national mentality reflecting their uniqueness.