SEMANTIC AND PRAGMATIC FEATURES OF SOMATISM IN ENGLISH AND UZBEK PROVERBS

Abstract

This study investigates the semantic and pragmatic features of somatism lexical units denoting parts of the human body in English and Uzbek proverbs from a comparative linguacultural perspective. Proverbs, as condensed carriers of collective experience and cultural values, frequently employ somatic imagery to encode abstract meanings, moral judgments, and social norms. The study aims to identify the dominant semantic fields and pragmatic functions of somatism  in both languages, as well as to reveal cross-linguistic similarities and culturally specific patterns. The research adopts a qualitative and comparative methodology, drawing on a corpus of English and Uzbek proverbs containing somatic components such as “head,” “hand,” “heart,” “eye,” and their Uzbek equivalents (“bosh,” “qo‘l,” “yurak,” “ko‘z”). Semantically, somatisms are analyzed in terms of metaphorical extension, polysemy, and symbolic representation. Particular attention is paid to conceptual mappings that link physical body parts with abstract domains such as intellect, emotion, morality, and social relations. Pragmatically, the study examines how somatic expressions function in discourse to perform evaluative, didactic, expressive, and persuasive roles. The findings demonstrate that while both English and Uzbek proverbs exhibit universal cognitive tendencies grounded in embodied experience, they also reflect distinct cultural models and value systems. For instance, certain somatisms show parallel metaphorical meanings across languages, whereas others reveal culturally bound interpretations shaped by historical, social, and ethical contexts. The thesis contributes to the fields of paremiology, cognitive linguistics, and cross-cultural semantics by providing a systematic account of how somatic elements operate at the intersection of language, cognition, and culture.