ANIMAL IMAGERY IN ENGLISH AND UZBEK PROVERBS AS A REFLECTION OF CULTURAL IDENTITY
Keywords:
animal imagery, proverbs, idioms, phraseology, cultural identity, cross-cultural linguistics, paremiology, Uzbek, English, conceptual metaphor.Abstract
This article examines animal-related proverbs and idioms in
English and Uzbek as linguistic reflections of cultural identity. Drawing on the
frameworks of cognitive linguistics and paremiology, the study analyses how two
typologically and culturally distinct languages - Germanic English and Turkic Uzbek - use animal imagery to encode moral values, social attitudes, and historically
conditioned worldviews. The analysis identifies both universal patterns grounded in
shared human observation of animal behavior, and culture-specific divergences that
reflect the different historical, geographical, and ethical contexts of the two speech
communities. Particular attention is given to the contrasting symbolic roles of the
horse, the dog, and the fox across the two languages, and to the broader implications
of these differences for cross-cultural communication and language pedagogy.
References
1. Lakoff, G., & Johnson, M. (1980). Metaphors We Live By. University of
Chicago Press.
2. Mieder, W. (2004). Proverbs: A Handbook. Greenwood Press.
3. Rahmatullayev, Sh. (1978). O'zbek tilining izohli frazeologik lug'ati.
O'qituvchi.
4. Taylor, A. (1931). The Proverb. Harvard University Press.
5. Vinogradov, V.V. (1947). Ob osnovnykh tipakh frazeologicheskikh
edinits v russkom yazyke. Akademiya nauk SSSR.
6. Cowie, A.P. (1998). Phraseology: Theory, Analysis, and Applications.
Oxford University Press.
7. Sapir, E. (1929). The Status of Linguistics as a Science. Language, Vol. 5,
207-214.
8. Kovecses, Z. (2002). Metaphor: A Practical Introduction. Oxford
University Press.
