THE CONCEPT OF ATTENTION-GETTING: LINGUISTIC APPROACHES

Attention-getting devices (AGEs) are short linguistic units used to capture or redirect the hearer’s focus. In English, items such as hey, look, or listen serve this role, while in Uzbek, qara, mana, and eshit fulfill similar functions. These expressions are integral for discourse management, signaling turn-taking, and highlighting relevance. Despite their ubiquity, AGEs have not been consistently studied across languages, particularly within Uzbek linguistics, where pragmatic markers remain an underexplored area.