Interpreting Cultural Silences in English and Uzbek News Headlines

Abstract

This article examines how implicit cultural meanings are formed and interpreted in English- and Uzbek-language news headlines. The headline is approached not as a neutral summary, but as a condensed act of interpretation in which ellipsis, metaphor, evaluative vocabulary, presupposition, and institutional naming activate the reader’s background knowledge. The study relies on a hermeneutic reading of headline patterns found in English and Uzbek media and on recent comparative scholarship devoted to media discourse in the two languages. The analysis shows that English headlines more often privilege compression, conflict framing, emotional sharpness, and intertextual economy, whereas Uzbek headlines tend to preserve greater explicitness, contextual support, institutional orientation, and markers of social respect. These differences are linked to broader communicative norms rather than to grammar alone. The article argues that successful interpretation and translation of headlines requires sensitivity to the cultural horizon within which seemingly small lexical choices acquire public meaning.