ANALYSIS OF THE CONATIVE AND PHATIC FUNCTIONS IN MEDIA DISCOURSE HEADLINES (CASE STUDY OF ENGLISH AND UZBEK)
Keywords:
Media discourse, linguistics of headlines, conative functionAbstract
This article provides a comparative-typological analysis of the manifestation of conative (imperative) and phatic (contact-establishing) functions in English and Uzbek media discourse headlines, focusing on linguopragmatic and modality characteristics. Drawing upon R. Jakobson’s theory of communicative functions and N.Fairclough’s critical discourse analysis, the study examines headline materials from online media outlets published between 2025 and 2026. The findings indicate that while the conative function in English headlines is predominantly realized through explicit imperative structures and strong deontic modality, it relies more on cognitive dissonance, rhetorical questions, and implicit subtext in the Uzbek language. On the level of the phatic function, person-oriented syntactic models prevail in English, whereas highly emotional-expressive vocabulary and dramatic metaphors dominate in Uzbek. The study concludes that phatic and conative functions act as an interconnected dialectical linguistic-manipulative mechanism within the system of media headlines. The final results serve to enrich the fields of modern comparative media linguistics, pragmalinguistics, and text translation with new scientific data, providing an important practical basis for special university courses.
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