PERLOCUTIONARY EFFECT IN POLITICAL DISCOURSE: A PRAGMALINGUISTIC ACCOUNT OF SPEECH ACTS AND ENGLISH–UZBEK COMPARATIVE PERSUASION

This article investigates the pragmalinguistic nature of perlocutionary influence in political communication by applying the speech act theory tradition (Austin; Searle) and critical discourse perspectives (CDA). Within the “locution–illocution–perlocution” framework, political utterances are treated not only as propositional contents but also as strategic actions that aim at shaping voters’ cognition, emotions, and behavioural tendencies. A comparative English–Uzbek lens is employed to show how election-time discourse uses language resources such as euphemization, conceptual metaphor, evaluative lexis, and syntactic rhetoric to realize illocutionary intentions that are expected to trigger perlocutionary outcomes. The study proposes a set of parallel coding indicators linking linguistic devices to perlocutionary indicators of framing adjustment, emotional orientation, and mobilization readiness.