COMPARATIVE PRAGMATIC ANALYSIS OF THE CONCEPT OF "POLITENESS" IN MODERN ENGLISH AND UZBEK COMMUNICATIVE CULTURES
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Keywords

politeness concept, cultural linguistics, ethnopragmatics, negative politeness, positive politeness, face-threatening acts, cultural schema.

Abstract

This study presents a comparative linguacultural and ethnopragmatic analysis of the macro-concept of "politeness" within contemporary English and Uzbek communicative cultures. Utilizing Brown and Levinson’s face-management theory alongside Farzad Sharifian’s cultural conceptualisations, the research investigates the fundamental structural divergence between English "negative politeness" (predicated on privacy, non-imposition, and personal autonomy) and Uzbek "positive politeness" (grounded in collective solidarity, hierarchical deference, and hospitable insistence). The paper analyzes the linguistic realisations of these models across indirect speech acts, honorific morphemes, and discursive softeners. The findings offer a concrete pragmatic framework designed to mitigate communicative breakdowns and cultural misunderstandings in cross-cultural professional and academic exchanges.

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References

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5. Sharifian, F. (2017). Cultural Linguistics: Cultural Conceptualisations and Language. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company.

6. Thomas, J. (1983). Cross-cultural pragmatic failure. Applied Linguistics, 4(2), 91–112.