Euphemisms in Uzbek Institutional Discourse: Balancing Linguistic Politeness and Communicative Transparency

This article investigates the pragmatic functions of euphemistic expressions in Uzbek institutional discourse, concentrating on the relationship between linguistic politeness and communicative transparency. Administrative, educational, medical, and public-safety interactions are compared through contextual analysis of illustrative utterances. The study distinguishes ethically motivated mitigation from expressions that obscure agency, weaken factual precision, or conceal the consequences of institutional decisions. It identifies semantic adequacy, interpersonal appropriateness, and institutional transparency as interrelated criteria for evaluating indirect formulations. The findings suggest that effective professional communication requires both sensitivity to the recipient and explicit presentation of consequential information. The article also considers implications for teaching professional Uzbek and developing context-sensitive pragmatic competence.