HUMOUR AS A PRAGMATIC AND STYLISTIC DEVICE IN MARK TWAIN'S "THE ADVENTURES OF TOM SAWYER" AND GAFUR GULOM'S "SHUM BOLA"

Humour occupies a central place in literary discourse not only as a means of entertainment, but also as a communicative and artistic instrument through which texts construct character, regulate social relations, and expose the contradictions of their cultural worlds. In linguistic research, humour is treated as a discourse phenomenon linked to pragmatics, irony, sarcasm, and conversational cooperation; Salvatore Attardo’s overview emphasizes that humor in language is studied through semantic, pragmatic, discourse, and interactional models, including the social functions of solidarity and exclusion.