Introduction

The wish/desire category is fundamental discursive resources for signaling preferences, intentions, and dispositions, as well as social alignment. Bilingual and cross-cultural communication incorporates articulation and interpretation of wish and desire that, in turn, reflect the sociopragmatic norms of politeness, face, modality, and stance alignment and the interplay of sociopragmatic norms. This study contributes to the discursive-pragmatic framework through analyzing differences and similarities in the English and Uzbek expressions of wish and desire across genres and contexts.

English relies mainly on modal verbs (would like, would prefer, hope, want) and conditional clauses for expressing wish/desire, often in indirect forms to mitigate face threats (Brown & Levinson, 1987). Uzbek, however, encodes desire morphologically through mood markers, evidential forms, politeness particles, and elaborate honorific structures that reflect age, respect, and social distance.

Theoretical and Literature background

In pragmatics, wish/desire intersects with illocutionary force, modality, and discourse structure. In English, studies focus on explicit constructions such as ‘would like’ and ‘would prefer’ and their pragmatic roles in face saving, politeness, and indirectness. Unlike English, Uzbek pragmatics studies emphasize the issue of mood/tense, evidential and focus markers, epistemic stances and evaluative stances, and also distinctive politeness strategies. Although more studies focused on Uzbek pragmatics, the pairing English and Uzbek discourse-pragmatic studies, especially on the wished/desired discourse in spoken and written texts, remains scarce.

According to Austin (1962) and Searle (1969), wishes are classified mainly as expressives, though in discourse they often blend with directives, especially when a desire implies an expectation or request.

Examples:

I’d like you to send the report. (Expressive + Directive)

I wish it were easier. (Expressive)

Politeness Theory: Politeness Theory (Brown & Levinson, 1987) highlights how expressing wishes may threaten positive or negative face. English typically mitigates FTAs using:

• modal verbs (would, might);
• hedges (kind of, maybe, perhaps);
• indirect constructions (If possible...).

Uzbek uses:

• honorific suffixes (-sangiz, -ingiz);
• polite mood markers (-sa bo’lardi);
• softening particles (-ku, -da, -a).

Modality and Stance: Halliday (1994) describes modality as an interpersonal system signaling probability, desirability, obligation, and inclination. English expresses modality syntactically; Uzbek encodes it morphologically through:

• optative mood;
• conditional/subjunctive;
• evidential markers (ekan, -mish);
• stance particles.

Cross-Linguistic Pragmatics: Wierzbicka (2003) notes that speech acts cannot be interpreted outside cultural norms. English desires often center on individual needs, while Uzbek desires frequently emphasize relational expectations, humility, and collective involvement.

Research questions

RQ1: How is the category of wish/desire realized discursively in English versus Uzbek?

RQ2: Which pragmatic markers (modality, mood, time reference, hedges, evaluatives, politeness strategies) accompany wishes in each language?

RQ3: How do genre, formality, and address terms shape the realization and interpretation of wish/desire?

RQ4: What cross-linguistic patterns emerge, and to what extent do sociolinguistic norms condition these realizations?

Significance: The study contributes to cross-linguistic pragmatics by integrating discursive-pragmatic analysis with bilingual data, informing translation practice, and offering pedagogy-relevant insights for teaching pragmatics in English and Uzbek.

Method

A qualitative, discursive-pragmatic, cross-linguistic comparative analysis of English and Uzbek. The analysis combines descriptive discourse with pragmatic analysis of different genres.

A bilingual corpus of English and Uzbek texts across genres serves as the data source. Example composition (replace with actual counts): English: tokens/utterances across genres A, B, C (e.g., conversations, interviews, social media, literature excerpts). Uzbek: tokens/utterances across genres D, E, F (e.g., conversations, interviews, social media, literature excerpts). Inclusive criteria were naturalistic data, overt or covert wish/desire expressions, a fair cross-genre distribution, and ethical data use.

Core categories

• Wish/desire expressions: explicit verbs (wish, want, would like, would prefer) and indirect realizations signaling desire.
• Illocutionary force: directive, expressive, commissive, or blends (e.g., directive-with-request overlap).
• Modality: explicit (might, may, must, would) and implicit via mood/tense.
• Time reference: present vs. future orientation.
• Politeness strategies: directness/indirectness, mitigators, honorifics, address terms.
• Hedging and stance: hedges (perhaps, kind of, etc.) and evaluative appraisal.
• Direct vs. indirect realization: quoted speech, reported speech, framing devices.
• Evidential cues (Uzbek): evidential markers signaling source of information or stance.

Participants

Participants have been recorded as the followings; number, age range, bilingual proficiency, language dominance, contexts of speech production. Recruitment: purposive sampling to capture genre variation and sociolinguistic variety. If corpus-based Corpus descriptions: sources, regional variation (Uzbek Latin vs Cyrillic, dialectal considerations), text types, time range. Ethics Informed consent, anonymity, data usage, IRB/ethics approvals as applicable.

Data collection

Procedures for collecting English and Uzbek texts: from corpora, transcripts, social media, interviews, literary excerpts; dates and access details. Size and balance Report counts per language and per genre; note sampling decisions for balance. Cleaning and preprocessing Transcription conventions; script handling; transliteration and glossing conventions. Ethical notes Anonymization, reuse rights, data-sharing constraints.

Data analysis

Build bilingual lexicons for wish/desire cues in English and Uzbek, including explicit verbs and indirect markers. Define pragmatic categories and coding rules. Coding procedure Step 1: annotate instances of wish/desire with target, illocutionary force, modality, and time reference. Step 2: classify discourse function (social alignment, self-expression, directive strategy). Step 3: identify cross-linguistic patterns and divergences. Reliability Inter-coder agreement processes; methods for resolving disagreements.

Results

Cross-linguistic and genre-pattern findings summarized in narrative form and with illustrative excerpts.

English examples (3–5 representative quotes)

Example 1 (direct wish with explicit modal): I would like to attend the conference next month.

Example 2 (indirect wish embedded in a request): If it wouldn’t be too much, I’d appreciate your sending the report.

Example 3 (aspirational wish): I hope to publish my findings this year.

Uzbek examples (3–5 representative quotes with glosses)

Example 4 (direct wish with mood): Men tashrif buyurishni xohlayman. (I wish to attend the visit.)

Example 5 (indirect with evidential stance): U meni ko’rish niyatida bo’lgan deb aytiladi. (It is said that he intended to meet me.)

Example 6 (politeness strategy): Sizga yoqsa, xohlasangiz… (If it suits you, please…)

Language-specific realizations

English: explicit modals (would like, would prefer); direct vs indirect requests as realizations of wishes.

Uzbek: mood/tense markers; evidentials signaling stance; formality and honorifics; indirect strategies.

Cross-linguistic patterns

Shared: future orientation; desire expressions used to align interlocutors with social goals; hedging in face-threatening contexts.

Divergences: modality encoding and evidential signaling in Uzbek; directness preferences in English; genre-driven variation.

English: Modal-driven wishes

English prefers clear modal constructions:

• I would like…
• I wish…
• I hope…
• I’d prefer…

Indirectness dominates:

• If it’s not too much trouble, I’d like…

Hedging is common:

• I kind of wish…

Uzbek: Morphological and relational encoding

Uzbek uses:

• mood markers (xohlayman, istayman, istardim);
• polite optatives (-sangiz bo’lardi);
• evidentials (ekan, -mish);
• address terms and honorifics.

Examples:

• Men ham qatnashishni istardim.
• Agar sizga maqul bo’lsa…

Cross-linguistic contrasts

Table 1.

Discussion       

It is alignment with or challenges to existing pragmatics theory; evidence for universals and language-specific adaptations in wish/desire realization. It is cross-linguistic pragmatics which interplays of modality, politeness, and stance in English vs Uzbek; role of evidentiality in stance signaling.

The findings confirm that wish/desire expressions reflect deeper socio-cultural norms. English emphasizes personal autonomy and face-saving via indirectness. Uzbek emphasizes relational hierarchy, group alignment, and moral expectations encoded through grammar.

Evidentiality in Uzbek demonstrates that desire often references shared knowledge (he was said to want...), while English wishes tend to be more self-oriented.

Genre-specific tendencies also appeared:

• Social media → more direct, emotional wishes;
• Formal interviews → elaborate politeness markers;
• Literary texts → metaphorical and expressive desires.

These results align with prior research in pragmatics and cross-cultural linguistics.

Conclusion

Cross-linguistic realizations of wish/desire with attention to politeness strategies, modal variation, and direct vs indirect expressions. Answers to RQs: summarized in the context of the data. Implications for theory and practice in discourse-pragmatic analysis, translation, and pedagogy. This study demonstrates significant pragmatic, cultural, and grammatical differences in how English and Uzbek express wish/desire. While both languages use strategies to soften desire and maintain interpersonal balance, English relies on syntactic strategies and hedging, whereas Uzbek uses morphological politeness, honorifics, and evidentiality.

Implications include:

• improved translation accuracy;
• enhanced intercultural competence;
• pedagogical recommendations for teaching pragmatics;
• development of context-based communicative materials.

The study bridges gaps in cross-linguistic pragmatics and sets the foundation for further research.