COMMUNICATIVE NORMS AND POLITENESS DEVIATIONS IN PROFESSIONAL EMAIL CORRESPONDENCE: ENGLISH VS. UZBEK ACADEMIC SETTINGS
Keywords:
Keywords: Pragmalinguistics, computer-mediated discourse analysis, professional email correspondence, academic settings, politeness deviations, communicative norms, English, Uzbek.Abstract
Abstract: In the contemporary globalized higher education landscape, digital communication, specifically professional email correspondence, serves as the primary medium for academic collaboration, institutional governance, and pedagogical interaction. However, successful digital discourse requires not only grammatical precision but also acute pragmatic competence. This article examines the linguistic and socio-cultural mechanisms that dictate communicative norms and politeness deviations in professional email correspondence within English and Uzbek academic settings. Grounded in Computer-Mediated Discourse Analysis (CMDA), Brown and Levinson’s Politeness Theory, and House’s Cross-Cultural Pragmatics framework, this study analyzes a corpus of 200 authentic emails exchanged between faculty members, administrators, and students. The findings reveal that communicative deviations systematically occur due to the structural friction between the Anglo-American individualistic, low-context, egalitarian academic script and the Uzbek collectivistic, high-context, hierarchical academic paradigm. The article categorizes specific patterns of pragmatic failure in salutations, honorifics, mitigation strategies, and closing formulas, concluding with concrete pedagogical strategies to enhance digital pragmatic literacy in foreign language acquisition in Uzbekistan.
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