Sustainable Development in the British and Russian Linguacultures: A Case Study of Non-Financial Reports

The study presents the comparative analysis of the verbal and non-verbal means representing the concept of sustainable development/sustainability based on the data of non-financial reports of British companies in English as well as Russian companies both in Russian and in English for 2013-2020. The research covers non-financial reports of four key economic sectors. Non-financial reports are viewed as a representation of corporate discourse. The research has revealed recurrent unique as well as universal linguistic and pragmatic features of the concept of sustainability in two cultures that are presented via semantic fields, demonstrating the core notions and the periphery. Overall, Russian non-financial reports copy the tone and structure of the British reports, albeit avoiding transparency, informality, and diversity of linguistic and persuasive tools, such as metaphors, typical for the British reports. The combination of certain cultural and linguistic features allows us to consider the English translations of the Russian non-financial reports as early signs of Russian English manifestation in this field. Further research from the standpoint of cognitive linguistics may shed more light on how sustainable development/sustainability is verbalized in various varieties of Englishes and linguacultures as such.