The similarities and differences of pragmatic acts revealed through English and Uzbek folk proverbs expressing friendship/enmity

This article discusses Speech Act Theory, which is a key concept in pragmatic linguistics. The theory asserts that a sentence is not merely a unit of information, but an action performed by the speaker, aimed at various goals such as asserting, questioning, ordering, apologizing, and more. Developed in the late 19th and 20th centuries, Speech Act Theory was shaped significantly by philosophers John Austin and John Searle. Austin's initial work in the 1950s divided speech acts into three categories: locutionary, illocutionary, and perlocutionary acts. Locutionary acts refer to the actual utterance of words, illocutionary acts represent the speaker's intent behind the utterance, and perlocutionary acts describe the effect the utterance has on the listener. The article further explores how proverbs in English and Uzbek express these acts, emphasizing the importance of context in understanding speech acts.