There were plenty of photographs of places I knew, places I had been
on assignment. I shared their meals and sweated the same sweat
suffered through mosquitoes that never seemed to stop.
That was part of the experience.
During my eighteen months in total, I never bought a camera.
Occasionally I borrowed a friend’s.
One of them had a Polaroid.
Another took pictures and made copies for me.
Maybe a dozen or so…
I always regretted
a hundred dollars bought a good camera.
I traveled a lot.
I had a lot of experiences during that time.
No camera.
This is 2026, and today I was feeling that familiar restlessness.
I went to the Internet and tried to find the veteran’s site.
It wasn’t there anymore.
I searched my brain for memories.
I continued using Google.
I used ChatGPT.
Nothing.
Suddenly it became clear.
It was gone.
All those touchstones were gone, and for all I knew, he was gone too.
I feverishly searched for Vietnam War sites, and they were gone too, or at least the ones I was looking for. There were, of course, headings from official sources, histories and government records and all the proper things.
But that wasn’t what I was looking for.
I was looking for the messy stuff.
The photographs.
The stories.
The places.
The memories of people who had actually been there.
I was looking for something that said: Yes. I remember that too.
Now I’m sitting here alone with only half memories left to my name.
DW Chance (Donald W. Chance) is a Vietnam veteran who served six years in the U.S. Navy. He started writing poetry in his early sixties and hasn’t stopped, with around 500 poems and fourteen self-published collections. His work has appeared in literary journals, and he is a member of Poets & Writers. He writes free verse in the plain-spoken tradition of Bukowski and the Beats, and lives in the desert Southwest.
A Copy of Ophelia Hangs in Miss Havisham’s Living Room
I watched a spider dance.
It knew the right movements.
It had no tie to civility.
There was also a woman in tattered white
dancing down a staircase.
The spider and the woman
confused their opportunities,
ignoring the setting
though neither knew the other existed.
I need my own approval
to make choices.
It is the charm
of knowing myself.
I distinguish contours from a sense of space.
I am between light and shadow.
Not dancing.
Dancing is not a skill,
it is a set of directions
purposeful only to an end.
Then the disorder of imagination
repels what went before.
I am a man that dreams gather about.
I am a book that skips moments,
chapters and illustrations.
What interests me is the bibliography.
To dance, you need approval.
To be, no approval is necessary.
And I am to be.
You can’t dance on water,
and it needs no approval.
It smashes into cliffs or devours ships.
I would like to be a waterfall.
Crushing what comes my way
and what tries to escape
I catch and toss.
I toss away.
I am never where I am
or where you think you will find me.
The obvious is not always observed.
There are no staircases, underfalls,
only water, falling.
With dignity,
not like one drowning
pleading for help.
Water just is.
It never screams.
It terrorizes when it
unexpectedly feels the need.
It can never be relied upon.
Stairs dismiss continuation.
They’re drawn from consequence.
They end before the future can be indicated.
The prediction fails
while the last step is taken.
Taken to where?
The spider is an unheralded birth.
It better dance,
because optimism is a morsel dressed and blinded by its flight.
Processed with indifference,
fate is cast to conclusions.
Depression’s discoveries
fill a room when the music stops.
But had the music ever begun?
I see ellipses unwind
as the ashen walls
fade into transparencies- skits attempted but never performed.
That white dress, sewn and torn,
a caricature of the wearer descending a worn hardwood staircase.
Arriving before and after,
the cloaked effect and cause.
There is no innocence in knot tying,
or taking a branding iron to an idea.
An idea that hurt, bled, and stung.
Water causes pain.
Spiders can bite.
A woman can get caught in traps.
An ambush is a recluse conspiracy,
a blindfold over a threshold.
Cold and artificial,
the room becomes a remembrance.
Troubled with decay and images
tussled with promises expected but unfilled.
Deception in an unappealing room is a deed
I can fence with even when compulsive.
Then again, this is not my room.
Loop around the cleat,
and pull on the loose end of the rope.
Admire the copy of Ophelia,
ask the resemblance of guests to leave.
The walls absorb what is not possessed.
The spider never attended the rehearsal.
Neither did the greatest desire.
When there is no notice, great expectations solve no riddles.
Suspense is part of the fearlessness of hope.
Hope holding back tears as no one arrives, and all leave in the same breath.
Everything is accustomed to its surroundings
but accustomed to a fleeting presence.
That is bare, empty and without apologies.
What appears when the dull shimmering light shows dust settling
on the water where Ophelia lies still?
Poor Ophelia,
mournless in a room with crumbled wedding cake in molding napkins.
Ophelia, a copy of a ceremony always in progress, never in sight.
A painter, inclined toward ambivalence,
could ask a writer with ethos
to develop a mishap for a wall hanging.
Wickedness is an interval, time a chance to address it.
The room had character,
not seen,
but felt as the woman in white attempted to straighten the painting.
A painting that could never be aligned.
The water seeped into the cracks of sanity.
The insanity slid down the winding stairs.
Ophelia lingers.
There was a glimpse of a girl and a boy.
Was the girl part of the crime?
She was holding the boy’s hand.
Everybody would like to have lived their life differently.
To be a murderer, survived on a ship of dreaded darkness.
I am a head hidden behind a raised collar,
fiddling with a box of matches.
Morality is a wish inside a dream.
Smell the allusion of stages.
Without evidence, secrets stiffen.
Then break into spindles of indifference
that explore sincerity, doubt, and turmoil.
After interrogation,
guilt awakens the lies imagination feeds upon,
denying the visible stains,
deeming them unseen.
There is a permission
to note nothing while dancing.
Fragments accumulate on the stairs,
scraps broken and slippery.
That spider notices there are bigger blacker spiders.
A copy of Ophelia hangs in the living room,
on a wall of dismal paint and fractured plaster.
She had seen those children.
Yes, she had.
Ophelia hangs
in a room full of lacquered staleness and an unplayed piano.
Unplayed for forty years.
Ophelia in the same place,
exiting time.
Her icy pale blue, against her white skin.
Something is unsettling about her
and the woman in the white wedding dress,
sallow with age, frayed with time’s claws
who cries for no one.
Ophelia on a wall,
fixed like the center of aftersight
and the other as if spirited by a meaningless mist
coming down a staircase to meet callers.
There is no reality.
It has dissolved with the spider’s lives.
Only misfortune
unties what has elapsed and places it
where it can lie
uncomfortably without the benefit of why.
It is justification for nothing,
and I am what sees through
all that is nothing’s something.
I am
eventuality,
a precipice where
waiting is a slow continual movement
on an unplayed piano.
A painting dulled and obscured
bears no resemblance to life occurring,
or recurring.
Bonds
lay before the clarified.
And completeness is an abstract noun.
Abstract, like a coil disappearing among other coils in thoughts like coils.
The mind, set aside,
develops extremes rather than wonders.
Confrontations with the present
have to have a past.
But whose?
And why care?
To trample what would have been pleasure?
Half-awakened pleasure or is that agony?
You can feel but not possess.
Laughter finds refuge in the grimy, neglected walls.
Secluded from beliefs,
unhinged by fascination,
events bow to propositions.
This is what reflection tells me
when I enter this room of little demand,
to imagine what is below the beginning.
Spackles of madness smooth the walls.
But here I am,
in this room of final expressions.
Within that dilemma you foresaw,
reality or dream
or
a yarn tangled in threads
yet a good knot can be easily untied.
Use its reflection.
A destiny amid remnants,
stems of dried flowers, an outline of an arrangement
on the broken glass table below Ophelia,
a book popular because it has no cause to be otherwise.
A sight to conjure imaginative propositions.
Staging, deliberate and without reward.
A tragedy amongst long-winded myths.
Ask the quests?
Or the ghosts.
Those that have lost all passion.
Did the girl notice the boy hunting the spider?
Black spiders accumulate.
They are aware of what is missing and create webs.
I noticed the painting,
but it felt like it wasn’t merely hanging anymore.
Circles ambush certainty.
Repentance rescues another exit.
An exit always in continuance,
a path that stumbles down a long staircase into a living room
with a painting that lost its symbolism long ago.
I am no longer
eventuality.
I have passed where my thoughts arrived.
I am fine with what is without.
The hard slap of Satis House.
A jilted woman in white.
A young woman in white.
A copy of a copy?
Or just a copy?
The match is lit.
The flames engulf.
Yet the inside has no ashes.
None at all.
Only a slight sheen of wetness from a waterfall.
Philip received his Master of Arts in Psychology from Simon Fraser University, Vancouver, Canada. He has published six poetry books, with another forthcoming. Three novels and two plays.He has a column in the magazine Per Niente. He enjoys all things artistic.
This study aims to investigate the morphosyntactic integration of English lexical items into Uzbek-language youth communication on Instagram and Telegram. It focuses on how English words and expressions occur within Uzbek grammatical structures, particularly through the addition of Uzbek inflectional suffixes and the formation of mixed-language constructions. The study adopts a comparative approach to examine publicly accessible social media texts from the two platforms. The proposed methodology combines qualitative linguistic analysis with quantitative description of the collected examples. The data will be classified according to morphological form, syntactic environment, and platform of occurrence. Particular attention will be paid to distinguishing instances of code-switching from established lexical borrowing, since the two phenomena may overlap in contemporary digital communication. By applying consistent analytical criteria to both platforms, the research seeks to describe patterns of grammatical integration and identify similarities and differences in the available data. The findings will be reported after the corpus has been collected and analyzed.
Keywords: code-switching, Uzbek-English bilingualism, social media discourse, youth communication, morphosyntactic integration, lexical borrowing, Instagram, Telegram.
1. Introduction
The expansion of digital communication has created new opportunities for multilingual language use. Social media platforms allow users to communicate rapidly, interact with diverse audiences, and draw on linguistic resources from different languages within the same communicative context. In multilingual communities, this practice may involve switching between languages, incorporating foreign lexical items, or combining elements from different linguistic systems. Such practices provide valuable material for investigating the relationship between language structure, social interaction, and digital communication.
Code-switching is commonly understood as the alternation between two or more languages or linguistic varieties within a conversation or communicative event. Its analysis extends beyond identifying the presence of different languages: researchers also examine where switching occurs, how grammatical structures interact, and what social or communicative purposes language choices may serve. Myers-Scotton (1993), for example, examines the grammatical organization of intrasentential code-switching and the structural relationships between languages in mixed utterances. This perspective is relevant to online communication in which a sentence may retain the grammatical framework of one language while incorporating lexical material from another.
In Uzbek-language social media communication, English expressions provide a useful area for examining language contact in everyday digital discourse. English words may appear independently, within Uzbek sentences, or in combinations involving Uzbek grammatical suffixes and auxiliary verbs. For example, forms such as postlar, deadlinega, and like qildim can serve as illustrative starting points for linguistic analysis. These examples are not findings from the present study; they demonstrate the types of forms that a systematic investigation could examine. Their classification requires attention to context because a borrowed lexical item and an instance of active code-switching are not necessarily the same phenomenon.
Instagram and Telegram offer two settings in which publicly accessible Uzbek-language communication can be studied comparatively. However, any differences between them must be established through collected evidence rather than assumed in advance. The platforms may provide different types of texts, including captions, comments, channel posts, and discussion messages. Consequently, the research design must define comparable sampling criteria and account for differences in the types of material available.
The present study focuses on the morphosyntactic integration of English lexical items in Uzbek youth communication on Instagram and Telegram. Its central concern is how English-origin forms participate in Uzbek grammatical structures and whether the collected examples reveal similarities or differences between the two platforms. Rather than assuming that all English-origin items represent code-switching, the study distinguishes, where the available context permits, between code-switching, lexical borrowing, and hybrid constructions.
The study is guided by three research questions:
What morphosyntactic patterns characterize the use of English lexical items in Uzbek-language youth communication on Instagram and Telegram?
How are English lexical items combined with Uzbek grammatical suffixes and other grammatical elements in the collected texts?
What similarities and differences can be identified between the two platforms when the same classification criteria are applied?
To address these questions, the study will use a systematically compiled sample of publicly accessible social media texts. Each relevant example will be classified according to its linguistic structure and contextual use. Quantitative descriptions will summarize the distribution of the identified forms, while qualitative analysis will explain their grammatical characteristics. The study will also acknowledge limitations arising from platform-specific sampling, uncertainty about users’ ages, and the difficulty of inferring speakers’ motivations from written posts alone.
The intended contribution of the research is a transparent, context-sensitive comparison of Uzbek-English language mixing across two social media platforms. By defining the dataset, analytical categories, and limitations explicitly, the study seeks to provide a reproducible account of the grammatical patterns found in the collected material.
2. Literature Review and Theoretical Framework
2.1. Code-Switching as a Linguistic Phenomenon
Code-switching has been widely examined in sociolinguistics and bilingualism research. It generally refers to the alternation between languages or linguistic varieties within a communicative interaction. However, code-switching is not simply the random insertion of foreign words into a sentence. Its linguistic analysis involves identifying the boundaries between languages, examining grammatical relationships, and considering the communicative context in which alternation occurs.
Poplack (1980) investigated structural patterns of code-switching and argued that switches between languages can be constrained by grammatical structure. Her work remains relevant to research on mixed-language utterances because it directs attention to the positions in which elements from different languages occur. In the present study, this perspective provides a basis for examining whether English lexical items appear as isolated insertions, as components of mixed constructions, or within larger stretches of English-language text.
Myers-Scotton (1993) developed a grammatical account of intrasentential code-switching in Duelling Languages: Grammatical Structure in Codeswitching. Her work examines the structural relationships between languages when elements from more than one language occur within a sentence. This approach is useful for investigating Uzbek-English communication because the grammatical framework of an Uzbek sentence may coexist with English lexical material. Nevertheless, the application of a particular theoretical model requires analysis of actual examples rather than assumptions based on isolated words.
2.2. Language Mixing in Digital Communication
Digital communication has expanded the range of contexts in which multilingual language practices can be observed. Social media posts, captions, comments, and discussion messages provide written evidence of language choices made in informal interaction. Unlike carefully edited academic writing, these texts may contain abbreviations, informal spelling, emojis, transliterated forms, and combinations of linguistic resources.
Research on digital multilingualism has considered how online communication relates to language choice, identity, and social interaction. Androutsopoulos (2015), for example, discusses networked multilingualism and language practices on Facebook. His work offers a useful background for considering multilingual communication as a socially situated digital practice rather than solely as a grammatical phenomenon.
The study of online language requires attention to the characteristics of each platform and the communicative context of individual texts. Instagram captions and comments may differ in purpose and structure from Telegram channel posts or discussion messages. These differences should not automatically be interpreted as linguistic differences between platforms. A valid comparison must consider whether the samples contain comparable kinds of material and whether the same analytical criteria are applied to both datasets.
2.3. Code-Switching, Borrowing, and Morphological Integration
An important theoretical issue in the study of Uzbek-English communication is the distinction between code-switching and lexical borrowing. Code-switching involves the use of linguistic material from more than one language within a communicative event, whereas borrowing concerns the incorporation of a lexical item into another language. In actual usage, the distinction may be difficult to establish because frequently used foreign-origin words can become integrated into the receiving language.
Haugen (1950) examined the linguistic analysis of borrowing, providing an important foundation for the study of lexical transfer between languages. Weinreich (1953) also addressed language contact and its linguistic consequences. These works help establish why the presence of an English-origin word in an Uzbek sentence should not automatically be classified as code-switching without considering its usage and grammatical behaviour.
Morphological integration is particularly relevant when English lexical stems occur with Uzbek grammatical suffixes. For example, forms such as postlar and deadlinega illustrate how an English-origin stem can appear with Uzbek morphology. These forms are illustrative examples, not observations collected for the present study. Their classification requires contextual evidence and consistent criteria for distinguishing established borrowings from productive mixed-language constructions.
The analysis should therefore record both the lexical origin of a form and its grammatical behaviour. A foreign-origin item that occurs with an Uzbek plural or case suffix provides evidence of morphological integration, but the suffix alone does not establish whether the item should be classified as a borrowing or as an instance of code-switching. The decision should consider the form’s distribution, context, and status in Uzbek usage.
2.4. Previous Research and the Research Gap
Recent research has addressed code-switching in internet communication and the adaptation of English lexical items in Uzbek youth social media discourse. Temirova’s 2026 article examines code-switching in online communication and discusses examples from Instagram, Telegram, and YouTube. Aslonova’s 2026 article focuses on English-origin lexical items in Uzbek youth social media discourse, including borrowing, code-switching, hybrid formations, and morphological adaptation.
These studies indicate that the general phenomenon is already receiving scholarly attention. Consequently, the present study cannot claim that Uzbek-English code-switching on social media has never been investigated. Instead, its potential contribution must be defined more narrowly.
The proposed study will focus on a transparent, matched comparison of publicly accessible Uzbek-language material from Instagram and Telegram. It will apply the same coding scheme to both platforms and document the distribution of selected morphological and syntactic patterns. The contribution will depend on the final dataset, the comparability of the samples, and the extent to which the analysis produces findings not already established in previous research.
2.5. Analytical Framework
The study combines a grammatical perspective on code-switching with an analysis of morphological integration and digital communication context. Each selected example will be examined according to the following dimensions:
Linguistic composition: whether the text contains Uzbek material, English material, or a combination of both.
Morphological structure: whether an English-origin stem occurs with an Uzbek suffix.
Syntactic pattern: whether the English item functions as a noun, verb-related expression, adjective, or another grammatical element within the sentence.
Contextual function: the communicative role that can reasonably be inferred from the surrounding text.
Platform and text type: whether the example comes from Instagram or Telegram and whether it is a caption, comment, channel post, or discussion message.
This framework makes it possible to compare linguistic forms while avoiding unsupported assumptions about users’ intentions. Where a communicative function cannot be reliably inferred from the text, the example will be described structurally rather than assigned a speculative motivation.
Selected Telegram examples relevant to morphosyntactic integration
The following two excerpts were selected because they are more directly relevant to the article’s focus. They were transcribed from screenshots supplied by the author. The writers’ ages are not established, and the excerpts therefore cannot independently demonstrate youth-specific usage.
Example T1: “Tlg deleted akkount bumaganda lk oddiy turpti hc nma qimedimi”
Analysis: “deleted” is an English form containing the suffix -ed, used in an Uzbek-dominant informal message. “akkount” appears to be a non-standard spelling of “account”. Because the spelling is informal and the full context is limited, the example should be treated as preliminary evidence of language mixing rather than definitive proof of a specific grammatical pattern.
Example T2: “cenelni bos ortga qaytadi exitni bossang chiqib ketadi”
Analysis: “exitni” appears to combine the English interface label “exit” with the Uzbek accusative suffix -ni. This is the clearest screenshot-based candidate for morphological integration among the supplied excerpts. The token “cenelni” is unclear and is not interpreted. The example should be retained as a qualitative illustration only.
Data limitation: Only these two excerpts are retained in the core analysis because the other screenshots contain promotional copy, isolated full English phrases, or ambiguous/non-relevant forms. This small, convenience-based Telegram sample cannot support frequency claims, representativeness, or a comparison with Instagram. The authors’ ages are not visible in the screenshots.
Instagram Examples Reported in Secondary Sources
The original Instagram posts have not been independently collected and archived for the present study. Therefore, the following forms are included as examples discussed in secondary literature on English-origin items in Uzbek social-media language, not as primary Instagram corpus data.
Example I1: “storyga”. Analysis: the English noun “story” takes the Uzbek dative suffix “-ga”. This illustrates the adaptation of an English-origin stem to Uzbek morphology.
Example I2: “postni”. Analysis: the English noun “post” combines with the Uzbek accusative suffix “-ni”. This is a clear candidate for morphological integration.
Example I3: “trendga”. Analysis: the English noun “trend” takes the Uzbek dative suffix “-ga”. These forms were not collected by the present author from specific Instagram posts and must therefore be excluded from platform-level quantitative counts.
Source and methodological note: these forms are treated as examples discussed in secondary sources titled “O‘zbek ijtimoiy tarmoqlarida ishlatilayotgan inglizcha o‘zlashmalar va ularning madaniy aks sadosi” and “Grammatical Adaptation of Social Media Terminology in Uzbek Language.” Their original Instagram contexts and authors’ ages have not been independently verified. They illustrate the linguistic analysis but do not replace primary corpus data.
3. Materials and Methods
3.1. Research Design
The study adopts a comparative descriptive design combining qualitative linguistic analysis with quantitative summaries. Its purpose is to examine the morphosyntactic patterns of English lexical items used in Uzbek-language communication on Instagram and Telegram. The comparison will focus on observable linguistic features rather than attempting to establish causal relationships between platform use and language behaviour.
The qualitative component will identify and describe the grammatical structure of selected examples. The quantitative component will summarize the distribution of the identified patterns in the collected sample. The two components will be used together to provide a structured account of the data.
3.2. Data Sources and Sampling
The proposed dataset will consist of publicly accessible Uzbek-language texts from Instagram and Telegram. Potential sources include public Instagram captions and comments and public Telegram channel posts and discussion messages. Private accounts, private groups, and personal correspondence will not be included.
To improve comparability, the researcher will establish a defined collection period and use consistent inclusion criteria across both platforms. The initial target is approximately 100 eligible text units from each platform. This is a proposed sampling target rather than a report of data already collected. The final sample size will depend on the availability of relevant material and the application of the inclusion criteria.
A text unit will be eligible when it contains Uzbek-language material and at least one identifiable English lexical item or English-language expression relevant to the research questions. Duplicate texts, unrelated material, and examples whose linguistic structure cannot be interpreted reliably will be excluded or documented separately.
The researcher will record the platform, text type, anonymized example identifier, relevant linguistic context, and the features required for analysis. Usernames, profile links, and other unnecessary personal identifiers will not be reproduced in the research dataset.
3.3. Inclusion and Exclusion Criteria
The inclusion criteria will be applied consistently to both platforms. Eligible examples must be publicly accessible, relevant to Uzbek-English language use, and sufficiently contextualized to support linguistic classification.
The study will distinguish between English-origin words integrated into Uzbek usage and instances of more active language alternation where the available evidence permits. Because the distinction can be ambiguous, uncertain cases will be marked for review rather than assigned a definitive category without justification.
The term “youth communication” will be used cautiously. A social media account’s appearance or informal writing style cannot reliably establish the author’s age. Unless age is independently and ethically established, the study will describe the material as Uzbek-language social media communication and will not claim that every author is a young person.
3.4. Coding Categories
Each eligible example will be coded using a predefined classification scheme.
The morphological categories will include English-origin stems with Uzbek plural suffixes, case suffixes, possessive suffixes, and other identifiable Uzbek grammatical markers. Mixed verb-related constructions, including combinations of English lexical material with Uzbek verbs, will be recorded separately. Examples without an identifiable Uzbek morphological marker will be classified according to their linguistic structure.
The syntactic analysis will consider the grammatical role of the English item within its surrounding Uzbek context. The contextual analysis will record observable features of the text and, where justified, discuss possible communicative functions. Interpretations of motivation will remain tentative because a written post alone rarely provides sufficient evidence to establish a user’s intention.
A coding guide will define each category and provide inclusion and exclusion examples. Where feasible, a second reviewer will independently classify a subset of the examples. Any disagreements will be examined and resolved transparently. If a second reviewer is unavailable, the limitation will be acknowledged.
3.5. Data Analysis
The qualitative analysis will describe the grammatical structure and contextual use of the selected forms. Each example will be examined in its immediate linguistic context, with attention to the relationship between the English-origin item and Uzbek grammatical elements.
The quantitative analysis will count the occurrences assigned to each category and calculate their proportions within the relevant platform sample. The denominator used for each percentage will be stated explicitly. Because one text may contain more than one relevant item, the study will distinguish between counts of text units and counts of individual linguistic tokens.
The comparison will use the same category definitions for Instagram and Telegram. Differences in raw counts will be interpreted in relation to the sample sizes and types of material collected. The analysis will not treat observed differences as representative of all users on either platform unless the sampling design supports such generalization.
3.6. Ethical Considerations and Limitations
The study will use publicly accessible material and will minimize the collection and reproduction of personal information. Usernames and identifiable details will be removed from the working dataset and from any examples presented in the article. Where a quotation could make a user identifiable through a simple search, the researcher will consider paraphrasing the example or obtaining appropriate permission, while preserving the linguistic feature under analysis.
The study has several anticipated limitations. Publicly accessible material does not represent all communication on either platform. Platform formats may produce differences in the kinds of texts available. The age and language background of individual users may be unknown, and the distinction between borrowing and code-switching may remain uncertain in some cases. These limitations will be addressed when interpreting the findings. In addition, the Instagram examples currently come from secondary sources and should not be treated as a primary Instagram corpus. A valid platform comparison requires independently collected Instagram and Telegram material selected with the same criteria and documented with dates and context.
The final methodology will report the actual collection period, final sample sizes, data selection procedure, and coding process after data collection has been completed.
References
Androutsopoulos, J. (2015). Networked multilingualism: Some language practices on Facebook and their implications. International Journal of Bilingualism, 19(2), 185–205.
Aslonova, G. U. (2026). Linguistic hybridization in Uzbek youth social media discourse: The adaptation of English lexical elements. World of Philology, 5(8), 364–370. https://doi.org/10.70728/phil.v05.i08.046
Haugen, E. (1950). The analysis of linguistic borrowing. Language, 26(2), 210–231.
Myers-Scotton, C. (1993). Duelling languages: Grammatical structure in codeswitching. Clarendon Press.
Poplack, S. (1980). Sometimes I’ll start a sentence in Spanish y termino en español: Toward a typology of code-switching. Linguistics, 18(7–8), 581–618. https://doi.org/10.1515/ling.1980.18.7-8.581
Weinreich, U. (1953). Languages in contact: Findings and problems. Linguistic Circle of New York.
O‘zbek ijtimoiy tarmoqlarida ishlatilayotgan inglizcha o‘zlashmalar va ularning madaniy aks sadosi. ResearchGate page. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/398651826_O%27ZBEK_IJTIMOIY_TARMOQLARIDA_ISHLATILAYOTGAN_INGLIZCHA_O%27ZLASHMALAR_VA_ULARNING_MADANIY_AKS_SADOSI
Grammatical Adaptation of Social Media Terminology in Uzbek Language. https://oscarpubhouse.com/index.php/sdlajps/article/download/1101/1084/2250
The Influence of the English Language on Uzbek Youth Jargon. https://jurnal-komparativistika.uz/en/issue/article/234/
The white strands in your hair are my mistake, I fear the day when I must face my fate. I failed to show you how true my love could be, Mother, if you can, please forgive me.
For my sake, you sacrificed so much, And thinking of it leaves me stunned as such. If you cannot forgive me, this world will be my prison, Mother, if you can, please forgive me.
THE POETIC PASSION: ‘ACROSS THE PAUSE’ BY DR LALIT MOHAN SHARMA.
Reviewed by Dr Jernail S. Anand
The poetic passion is self-consuming but like a flame it goes down in splendour. -Anand
THE AUTHOR:
Dr. Lalit Mohan Sharma is a seasoned voice in contemporary poetry whose reflective verses beautifully weave personal introspection with universal human experiences…his work continues to enrich modern poetic discourse with depth, clarity, and quiet emotional power, ” writes Malini Joshi, editor, The Literature Times. Born 1952, a former government college Principal, Dr Sharma is a bilingual poet, translator and author. His publications include 17 books of English poetry, two anthologies of Hindi poems, Another Gandhi, a monograph on Pandit Durga Dass, a freedom fighter and A Three- Step Journey, an English verse translation of Zahid’s Urdu poems. His poetry book On the Edge has received the International Culture Award from International Academy of Rome. Included in several books of repute on poetry, stories and academic research on Modern Thought and Post-Truth Era, his poetry books, Icy Chill on Fire, Across The Pause, and ‘Blind Man’s Bluff’, his first book of short fiction, came out in 2026. International Academy of Ethics has conferred on him fellowship of the Academy.
Review
The poet’s job is to look with wonder at the phenomenon and analyze things which disturb the human flown, generate sympathy for man where he is a victim and react when he is a perpetrator, and above all, express his angst if he finds himself helpless. Whether someone agrees with you or not, does not matter if the poet is true to himself, because poetry is the result of an inner craving, and it ignites the same fire in the readers. The poetic passion is self-consuming but like a flame it goes down in splendour.
If William Wordsworth had met Lalit Mohan Sharma, he might have reconsidered his theory of emotion recollected in tranquility, and even Eliot might have given a thought to his idea of ‘escape’ from emotion, because here is the poetry which resembles a volcanic eruption. When the procession of the Muse takes off, a thousand wry calculations stand on the banks, looking in wonder at flowning waters. Poetry takes into its stride everything that looked so unpoetic – all pains, all joys – everything that lent any emotion to the poet, is woven into the spiral of poetry, which moves like waves towards the ocean.
It is more like a mining operation. The poet digs deep into his heart, and brings up pearls of emotion from the depths. Of course, this dive into the self is propelled by outside agencies. For every moment, there is a stimulus which sends him poeticising.
It is the environment outside, and the passion inside, which intersect each other at a certain degree of heat, where they melt and the imagination carves out new forms, new articulations, and new thoughts. Poetry is that novelty which even surprises the poet and he wonders if he carried an idea so sublime in his own blood and veins.
‘Across The Pause’, Dr Lalit Mohan Sharma’s 2026 collection of 75 poems, is a mature, deliberate work from a poet who has spent a lifetime with words: as a bilingual writer, translator, former college Principal, and author of 16 English poetry books. The result is a volume of rare cohesion, emotional clarity, and quiet power. It is a record of the impromptu conversations which take place when intellect and heart sit down together in the face of subtle and not so subtle challenges and exigencies of daily life.
Described as Sharma’s “most conscious and mature work”, the work “transforms “everyday life into a territory of existential interrogation”. The pause signifies the suspension, that separates loss and presence, oblivion and memory, and fulfilment and desire.
Mauro Montacchiesi thinks that it is a text that encourages contemplation, the suspension of judgment, and reflection. The language used is essential, clear. According to him, Sharma has mastered the art of subtraction: every emotion is filtered through a sensitivity that prioritizes depth and measure; every image is necessary; every line is calibrated. His poetry seeks emotional truth and resonance. It is a poetry that requires attention to be fully understood. In the Preface, the poet himself asserts: Writing a poem is an overwhelming experience, you forget the rest of the world, only remember what enters into a poem with its independent life. Writing is therapeutic, mind is acclimated to a celebratory joy, a quietness akin to mindfulness.
Time disturbs the poet in various ways. In ‘Stasis’, he finds man and his impatient moves infructuous before the wilful movement of time:
Time will not move faster if you quicken
The needles of the dial on your wrist for
No illusion can pluck and twist a reality
To suit the whims of this finite existence.
When the poet wants to hasten into tomorrown [Tomorrow’s Day], it leads to an emotional dislocation of time. Dr. Sharma excels himself in giving expression to the idea how sleep escapes the grip of a disturbed soul:
Sleep has often delayed her embrace
I wish to have tomorrown’s bath at night
And get dressed up for the next morning
“Urgency” picks on the raw needs of life, which, denied, turn into a haunting passion. The mask of the poet is off, for a moment, philosophy is taken off like clothes, and we see the clear vision of a languishing soul suffering the pangs of separation:
O for a pair of feminine lips and hands
With green glass bangles on the wrist,
Fair feet clasped in inch high sandals,
Mouth moves ever so lightly as she rolls
Up her hair into plaits to raise in a bun!
The poet wonders if death is “just disappearance”. “Ethereal”, is a superb document of pain, loss and the end where man’s wits sometimes find themselves:
Whom did I love, I do not known for
The one with whom I shared living
Just vanished as a cloud in the sky light,
In the room as when power supply fails.
Nothing has yielded more contemplation and acrobatics of thoughtful meditation than a “Mirror” in the poetic lore across ages:
Looking into a mirror makes none happy,
It’s when a human face turns into a mirror
That you discover joy deep in your heart.
“Choice options” points to the convulsions in poet’s mind where he fails to grasp “what inner conflicts seize human organs? And “what grueling battles are fought within?. “Intellectual” humanizes man half stricken by cleverness. The poet points to a great divide in man’s perceptive parts, but what restores his humanity is his susceptibility to err:
The intellectual acts by half his cleverness,
For he too is vulnerable to his emotions,
Can’t always keep intact his detachment,
Partially succumbs to error like the ordinary.
“Resolution” is a poem which reflects the true Lalit who realizes the repair work is on before the ultimate surrender. The poetry assumes a stoic tone, lending a rare sagacity to the text, missing in ordinary mortals, who suffer the pangs of life:
Let me carry on repair work and paint
Walls injured with time and look ugly
To the eye, the house resembles ruins
With time, and seem to be uninhabitable.
“Reading and Writing”, perhaps concludes this tumultuous journey in which the poet finds “Reading will become surrogate writing”. This coming together of the subject and the object is like bridging the gap between two entities of man, the attempt to understand [reading] and the final work when this understanding is dispersed in the winds [writing].
Once you identify with the author’s mask,
That’s to ask yourself to expand beyond T
The limiting concerns of your narrown life; Y
ou assume a larger canopy of existence.
The poems stand out for “emotional clarity, formal discipline, precision of imagery” with a poetics that “favours the sobriety of feeling” and qualify beyond confessional poetry to meditative lyricism. The work deals with themes of time, female presence, fragility of body, illness and solitude, the political as an extension of the personal. The language is disciplined, imagery precise. Each poem springs from “a soulful emotion that seeks to translate into words what eludes the grasp of rationality.” The foreword’s mention of “fragility of contemporary democracies” and “manipulation of consensus” hints that Sharma is not writing from an ivory towner. Yet the political never overwhelms the personal. Instead, it’s absorbed into the same meditative field.
The epigraph from Dante’s La Vita Nuova — “All ye that pass along Love’s trodden way, / Pause you awhile and say / If there be any grief like unto mine” — sets the tone perfectly. It frames the collection as an invitation to pause with the poet, to test your grief against his, and find kinship rather than competition. Finally, ‘Across The Pause’ which carries Sharma’s own sober, luminous signature, speaks most to readers who value reflection over reaction and look for the moments between moments.
Dr Jernail Singh Anand stands as a major figure in contemporary world literature as a 21st Century Metaphysical Poet. With 210 books, including 20 epics, he has created a distinctive body of work that fuses Vedic spirituality, ethical inquiry, social critique and philosophical reflection. His seminal epic Lustus: The Prince of Darkness and the recent Equilibrium reimagine mythology for the technological age. Founding President of the International Academy of Ethics, he is a laureate of the Charter of Morava (Serbia), Seneca (Italy), Franz Kafka and Maxim Gorky awards. His name is inscribed on Serbia’s Poets’ Rock, and he holds honorary membership of the Serbian Writers Association. Anand’s writing positions poetry as an instrument of planetary consciousness and moral responsibility.
You will understand me on the day I am no longer here;
Though you stretch your arms toward me, my hand will not appear.
Call my name a thousand times—I shall not hear you then,
Nor sit and count the passing hours, waiting once again.
Lend your ear and wait for me—I shall sing no song;
I shall not sail the boat of love where your heart belongs.
Ask forgiveness for your wrongs—I shall forgive no more;
Nor build a palace of my love within your heart’s deep door.
Worship me as much as you may—no blessing shall I give;
Bring offerings to my feet—I shall take none while I live.
If I sulk, if I grow cold, you cannot make me smile;
Your eyes may speak a thousand words—they shall not beguile.
I know you cannot live a day without me by your side;
Yet then your honeyed words shall find no place to hide.
No matter how you clear the doubts that once divided two—
Never again shall I return to kiss the soul of you.
If you truly loved me, why did you give me pain?
You failed to understand my heart, and broke your word again.
For you I cried so many tears—I shall not cry that day;
You will search for me among the crowd, while I am far away.
Come to erase your mistakes—I shall not heed your call;
The one who made me understand myself—I shall not leave at all.
The Fall of Nirvana
The children dreamed in jet-propelled velocity,
Awakening toward the stars with cosmic intensity.
Notebooks floated in the wind, with galaxies in their sight—
Did their parents know that this would be their final flight?
Even flawless machines may halt in fate’s fierce slipstream,
Dedicated minds may scatter through a shattered data-stream.
Tender bodies split apart in explosions deep within,
Unfinished grammar gathers where the ruins begin.
At study desks they built illusions shaped by gravity,
While wreckage turned the flight into a grief-stricken tragedy.
At the milestone—ah, Nirvana fell from the sky,
And DNA now searches for the bodies left behind.
On burnt-out badges mingles the colour of blood,
The holiday bell awakens echoes of a grieving flood.
Dreams that once rose upward now lie beneath the stone—
A generation’s unfinished dreams, forever left unknown.
Your Eyes
I looked into your eyes and saw a desert, vast and grey,
Where no beloved’s shadow ever chose to stay.
You gaze at me sometimes—in secret, sometimes clear,
Yet I lower my eyes and speak in whispers near.
You think I never look at you—perhaps you call it shame;
No, no, no—I’ll tell you now the truth behind the same.
There is no magic in my eyes, only a sunless cry;
Do not keep your eyes in mine—you may burn beneath the sky.
When the desert in your eyes grows thirsty, parched and wide,
The cuckoo of the forest-heart will sing from deep inside.
Love will trace its tender line upon your waiting brow,
And clouds across the sky of mind will thunder even now.
The rain has washed the kohl away that once adorned my eyes,
And every tender feeling drowned in separation’s tides.
So many fiery springs have come, yet all the magic fled;
In haunted dreams I still behold the form of him instead.
And then, for all your sorrow, I alone shall bear the blame,
Caught within the ruthless web of love and loss and flame.
My love has wept away with tears; everything has flown—
With what face, tell me, could I say, “I love you,” when it’s gone?
Truth and Falsehood
How will you hide the truth? Tell me, how will you conceal?
No matter how you twist and turn, the truth itself will reveal.
Build your mountains out of lies, exaggerate and scheme—
When truth is known to everyone, you’ll wake from your dream.
Let falsehood be your Ganges, sail your little boat along,
But when you reach the middle sea, your helm will soon be gone.
You will find no shore or refuge, drifting far and wide;
Falsehood will lose its very breath beneath the roaring tide.
When you walk upon the tender grass and rest beneath a tree,
Truth will come like a thorn beneath your foot relentlessly.
Falsehood is your shield and sword, in your eyes and on your tongue;
But truth will strike you like a blade and leave your heart undone.
Falsehood is the palace where your secret life is kept,
But truth will come like a serpent—its bite cannot be slept.
You may summon clouds with lies and darken every sky,
But truth will rise as thunder, and your hidden words will fly.
Falsehood is a death-like road; truth is the path of life—
Remember this forever: truth survives beyond the strife.
The Final Meeting
Upon the horizon burned a crimson, dying light,
In my eyes arose the ruins of memories, pale and white.
Upon your face there rested a silent, sacred form;
Time itself had bowed its head beneath that final storm.
Extinguished love became a murmur, echoing in despair,
The heat of failure woke within consciousness laid bare.
Within a nest without a pulse, long sighs remained,
And echoes of our love returned like promises unclaimed.
Upon your palm there rested mercy, tender and slight;
Within my heart the curse of silence rose that night.
Through pain that cannot be undone, I trace impermanence,
Our final meeting—an unshaken dialogue with emptiness.
Across the face of heaven fell the lines of doom,
We stood like two horizons locked within the same room.
No festival, no celebration—only silence, cold and deep;
At our final meeting, grief awoke from its eternal sleep.
Dr. Tania Rahman Toni is a Bangladeshi gynae practitioner and surgeon, bilingual poet, and writer. Alongside her medical profession, she has been pursuing literature for nearly 25 years. She writes poetry in both Bengali and English, exploring human emotions, nature, culture, life, and the diverse dimensions of human experience.
Her literary journey began during her school years, when her writings started appearing in newspapers and periodicals. At the age of 15, she published her first solo poetry collection, Nabajatra. At 18, her second solo poetry collection, Aparajita, was published at the Amar Ekushey Book Fair in Bangladesh.
Born and raised in Naogaon, Bangladesh, Dr. Tania developed an early interest in education and literature. She currently practises as a gynae practitioner and surgeon.
In recognition of her literary contributions, she has received numerous honours in Bangladesh and India:
2022 Awards in Kolkata (Mahabangha Sahitya Parishad): Parichand Mitra Literary Award, National Excellence Award, and Jagoddurga Sharad Samman.
Awards in Bangladesh: Masik Shomoyer Sur Sahitya Award, Atish Dipankar Golden Peace Award (from the Sammilito Sangskritik Society), Shaheed Zia Golden Peace Award, and numerous other honours.
Balancing medicine and literature, Dr. Tania continues to pursue humanitarian service and creative expression while connecting her cultural roots with an international readership. Her poetry has also been translated into several languages and published beyond Bangladesh.
