SOCIOLINGUISTIC REGISTER AND LANGUAGE CHOICE ACROSS FORMAL VS INFORMAL DISCOURSE IN ENGLISH, RUSSIAN, AND UZBEK: LEXICO-GRAMMATICAL MARKERS AND CONTEXTUAL CONSTRAINTS

Abstract

This article examines sociolinguistic register and language choice across formal and informal discourse in English, Russian, and Uzbek, with particular attention to lexico-grammatical markers and contextual constraints. The study adopts a comparative sociolinguistic and discourse-pragmatic approach to identify similarities and differences in the linguistic realization of formality and informality. Particular attention is paid to lexical choice, grammatical structures, pronouns, address forms, modality, ellipsis, syntactic complexity, colloquial vocabulary, and code-switching. The analysis demonstrates that formal discourse in all three languages tends to employ standardized vocabulary, institutional terminology, explicit syntactic structures, politeness strategies, and greater communicative distance. Informal discourse, by contrast, is characterized by colloquial vocabulary, contractions, elliptical structures, direct address, emotional expressiveness, and greater interactional flexibility. However, the linguistic realization of register varies considerably across the three languages. English relies heavily on lexical, modal, and syntactic strategies, whereas Russian and Uzbek make particularly significant use of pronominal and address distinctions. The findings confirm that language choice is strongly constrained by social distance, status, age, communicative purpose, topic, institutional setting, and cultural norms.