HERMENEUTIC INTERPRETATION OF IMPLICIT CULTURAL MEANINGS IN ENGLISH AND UZBEK NEWS HEADLINES

Abstract

News headlines compress complex events into a short textual frame, but their efficiency comes with a cost: many evaluative and cultural assumptions remain implicit. This article offers an exploratory hermeneutic analysis of implicit cultural meanings in a small comparative corpus of English-language headlines (Reuters) and Uzbek-language headlines (Kun.uz) published in 2024–2026. Combining philosophical hermeneutics (the hermeneutic circle, the fusion of horizons) with discourse-pragmatic tools from framing research and headline studies, the paper identifies recurring mechanisms through which headlines presuppose shared values, normalize institutional authority, and cue moral evaluation without stating it directly. The analysis highlights cross-linguistic differences in agency and voice (explicit actor naming vs. impersonal/passive constructions), in the distribution of modality and certainty, and in culturally saturated lexicon that signals modernisation, social responsibility, or moral order. Finally, the article outlines how multilingual language models can support scalable comparative headline analysis while preserving interpretive rigor. The findings contribute to media linguistics, intercultural pragmatics, and media and information literacy by showing where “meaning beyond words” is created in the headline itself