CODE-SWITCHING AT MOMENTS OF AUTHORITY: WHEN UZBEK PUBLIC RELATIONS TURNS TO ENGLISH

In contemporary Uzbekistan, English increasingly appears in public-facing institutional discourse – understood here as language produced by official organizations to inform, regulate, and manage public behavior, particularly at moments requiring authority, compliance, or procedural clarity. This article investigates code-switching into English in Uzbek public relations (PR) discourse, focusing on three high-control genres: announcements, policies, and warnings. Using a pilot corpus of official digital communications from government e-services, higher education institutions, state websites, and transport authorities, the study demonstrates that English insertions are strategically used at moments of authority: deadlines, restrictions, instructions, and alerts – rather than randomly or decoratively. The findings suggest that English functions as a pragmatic authority marker, indexing modernity, institutional legitimacy, and reduced ambiguity in governance communication. The article contributes to research on code-switching, linguistic landscape, and institutional discourse in post-Soviet multilingual contexts.