COGNITIVE-PRAGMATIC MECHANISMS OF ALLUSION IN ENGLISH AND UZBEK LITERARY DISCOURSE

Abstract

The present article examines allusion as a cognitive-pragmatic mechanism of intertextuality in English and Uzbek literary discourse. Allusion is treated not merely as a stylistic ornament but as a complex cognitive operation that activates a precedent text a “source frame” stored in the reader’s long-term memory and blends it with the immediate co-text, generating emergent, inferential meaning that neither structure carries on its own. Drawing on frame semantics, the theory of conceptual integration (blending), and the Moscow school’s theory of precedent phenomena, the study identifies and compares the cognitive mechanisms and pragmatic functions of allusion in a corpus of English and Uzbek literary prose. The results show that the underlying cognitive operations frame activation, conceptual blending, and presupposition triggering are universal and language-independent, while the cognitive base from which allusions are drawn is culturally specific: English allusive strategy relies predominantly on the Judeo-Christian and Greco-Roman canon and on Shakespeare, whereas Uzbek allusive strategy is grounded in classical Eastern poetry (above all Alisher Navoiy and the wider Persian-Tajik tradition), Qur’anic and Sufi sources, and national folklore. This asymmetry of cognitive bases is shown to have direct consequences for literary interpretation, cross-cultural pragmatics, and, in particular, for literary translation, where it produces systematic “culture bumps” requiring conscious compensatory strategies.