The article presents a comparative pragma-stylistic study of antonymic phraseological units in English and Uzbek. Antonymy is examined at two levels: phraseological units opposed to each other by meaning and stable expressions containing antonymic components within one structure. Special attention is paid to their pragmatic functions, including evaluation, contrast, intensification, irony, emotional expressiveness, persuasive effect and the activation of culture-specific meanings. The analysis demonstrates that semantic opposition becomes fully meaningful only in discourse, where context, speaker intention and stylistic register determine the communicative value of a phraseological unit. The paper also argues for functional equivalence rather than literal correspondence in translation.
phraseological unit
antonymy
pragmastylistics
semantic opposition
expressiveness
evaluation
context
discourse
translation equivalence
English
Uzbek