NATIONAL-CULTURAL FEATURES THROUGH METAPHOR IN ENGLISH AND UZBEK CORPORA

Abstract

This article examines how national-cultural features are expressed through metaphor in English and Uzbek corpora. Drawing on Conceptual Metaphor Theory, corpus-based metaphor studies, and the Metaphor Identification Procedure, the article argues that metaphor is not only a linguistic ornament but also a culturally shaped cognitive and pragmatic mechanism. English and Uzbek metaphors share many embodied source domains such as body, movement, space, light, growth, and construction. However, they differ in frequency, lexical realization, grammatical packaging, evaluative force, and discourse function. English corpus data often show metaphors organized around system, mechanism, competition, architecture, and individual agency, whereas Uzbek corpus evidence frequently foregrounds path, foundation, heart, moral purity, social harmony, light, and collective value. These differences reveal that metaphor reflects both universal bodily experience and culturally specific models of life, emotion, education, morality, and social relations