AUTHORITY WITHOUT DOMINANCE: LINGUISTIC SOFT POWER IN ENGLISH AND UZBEK INSTITUTIONAL PR DISCOURSE
Keywords:
institutional discourse; linguistic soft power; pragmatics; PR discourse; English–Uzbek comparisonAbstract
Faced with a paradox in communicating through digital mediums, institutions are in a dilemma as they attempt to assert authority by letting the public know they are in control and at the same time want to avoid seeming controlling and losing the trust of the public. The purpose of this thesis is to examine the role of linguistic soft-power in both English-speaking and Uzbekistan's institutional PR communications to project authority without seeming dominant. Research will be contextualized by linguistic pragmatics and linguistic culture frameworks and will incorporate a corpus (a body of written work) of publicly funded PR text produced by public institutions and large organizations on official Web sites and social media. Through qualitative comparison analysis, this research will examine strategies that mitigate, modalities, pronoun use, types of justification framing, and impersonal constructions in the PR corpus. While both forms of PR communication rely on mechanisms that promote soft power, the type of English PR is based upon the cultural perception of openness, rational decision-making, and service to the betterment of others while the Uzbekistan PR form relies heavily on a collectivist view of the world, moral obligation to others, and harmony with their fellow citizens.
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