COMPARATIVE STUDY OF POLITENESS STRATEGIES IN ENGLISH AND UZBEK ACADEMIC EMAILS

This article presents a comparative analysis of politeness strategies employed in English and Uzbek academic emails. Drawing on the theoretical framework of pragmatics and politeness theory, particularly Brown and Levinson’s model, the study examines how linguistic and cultural norms shape the realization of politeness in academic written communication. The research focuses on greeting forms, requests, hedging devices, expressions of gratitude, and closing formulas used by students and academic staff in institutional email correspondence. A corpus-based qualitative and quantitative analysis is applied to identify similarities and differences between the two languages. The findings reveal that English academic emails tend to prioritize indirectness, mitigation, and negative politeness strategies, whereas Uzbek academic emails demonstrate a stronger preference for positive politeness strategies rooted in respect, hierarchy, and culturally specific etiquette norms. The study highlights the influence of sociocultural values on academic discourse and emphasizes the importance of pragmatic competence in intercultural academic communication.