Abstract
This article investigates the stylistic and pragmatic devices that shape the communicative effectiveness of diplomatic discourse, focusing on three key strategies: metaphor, euphemism, and rhetorical formulas. It aims to reveal how these linguistic mechanisms construct diplomatic meanings, negotiate political stance, and sustain intercultural communication.The research views diplomatic discourse in the light of strategic communication wherein linguistic options can be used to persuade, reduce, and build identity. The conventional studies of political language have tended to favor the ideological content at the expense of the stylistic and functional ways in which this content is expressed. The present study will fill such a gap with the investigation of the interaction between rhetorical creativity and practical restraint of diplomatic communication. The results presented show that a metaphor defines the conceptual models of cooperation or confrontation, euphemism mitigates the act of face threatening language, and rhetorical formulas institutionalize a diplomatic position. Empirical base is represented by official diplomatic texts in English and their Chinese translations. Qualitative and quantitative methods are used to discover repetitive metaphorical patterns, euphemism, and formulaic language. The findings prove that the integrated stylistic–pragmatic framework can be used as a full-scale tool of comprehending diplomatic discourse and is helpful to provide practical information to diplomatic translation and translator training. As part of this research, the authors points out that diplomatic translators must balance political equivalence with cultural resonance and tonal appropriateness, especially when formulaic expressions embody policy stances and euphemisms preserve negotiability.