LINGUISTIC WAYS OF EXPRESSING COMPLIMENTS IN RUSSIAN, ENGLISH, AND UZBEK LANGUAGES

This article presents a comparative pragmatic and linguistic analysis of compliment expressions in three typologically diverse languages: Russian, English, and Uzbek. Compliments, as positively evaluative speech acts, serve as powerful tools of social bonding, politeness, and identity negotiation across cultures. Drawing on the theoretical frameworks of Austin (1962), Searle (1969), Brown and Levinson (1987), and Wolfson (1983), the study examines the structural, lexical, and semantic features of compliments in each language, identifying both universal tendencies and culture-specific patterns. The findings reveal that English compliments are typically formulaic and syntactically fixed, focusing on individual achievement and appearance; Russian compliments show greater grammatical flexibility and emotional depth owing to the inflectional morphology of the language; and Uzbek compliments reflect collectivist cultural values, age- and status-based hierarchies, and a preference for indirect or metaphorical praise. The article also considers how gender, social distance, and communicative context shape complimenting behavior in each linguistic community. The results have implications for intercultural pragmatics, language pedagogy, and cross-cultural communication research.