Pragmatics of indirect speech in the Russian and Uzbek communicative space

Abstract

The article presents a comparative study of the pragmatics of indirect speech in Russian and Uzbek communicative cultures. Drawing on dialogic fragments from fiction, conversational speech, and everyday communication, it examines how universal mechanisms for producing and interpreting indirect speech acts, described in implicature theory and speech act theory, are realized in the two linguocultures. The methodology combines comparative pragmalinguistic, contextual, and functional-semantic analysis. The findings indicate that the use of indirectness is associated with politeness norms, status-role relations, and culturally shaped communicative expectations. In the Russian material, indirectness is largely related to the degree of situational formality and status distance, whereas in the Uzbek material deference to elders and the category of andisha play a substantial role. Particular attention is paid to requests, directives, and refusals. The results are relevant to intercultural communication theory, language pedagogy, pragmatics, and translation studies.