LINGUOCULTURAL AND PRAGMATIC ANALYSIS OF SOCIO-POLITICAL MEDIA TEXTS IN THE UNITED STATES AND UZBEKISTAN
Abstract
Socio-political media discourse plays a central role in shaping political reality by framing events, evaluating actors, and embedding ideological meanings through language. This study presents a comparative linguocultural and pragmalinguistic analysis of socio-political media texts from the United States and Uzbekistan, two countries with distinct political systems, media traditions, and cultural models of communication. The research is grounded in Cultural Linguistics (Sharifian, 2017) and Pragmatic Discourse Analysis (Mey, 2001; van Dijk, 2006). The corpus consists of forty political news and opinion texts published between 2021 and 2024 in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Xalq Soʻzi, and Gazeta.uz. Qualitative analysis reveals clear cross-cultural differences in the construction of political values, national identity, and ideological positioning. American media discourse is characterized by explicit evaluation, critical framing, and argumentative strategies linked to democratic accountability. Uzbek media discourse, by contrast, emphasizes national unity, stability, and gradual reform through indirect persuasion and positive institutional framing. The findings demonstrate that political meaning in media discourse is culturally and pragmatically constructed rather than neutral.