CULTURAL SPECIFICITY OF SOMATIC PHRASEOLOGICAL UNITS IN ENGLISH AND UZBEK

Abstract

This article examines how somatic phraseological units (SPUs) in English and Uzbek encode culture-specific views of the world. A qualitative contrastive method is applied to data extracted from dictionaries and recent studies on English and Uzbek phraseology. The analysis demonstrates that, although bodily experience provides a shared basis for metaphor formation, the phraseological meanings in each language reflect different cultural priorities. English SPUs tend to highlight individual agency, rational self-control and personal feelings, whereas Uzbek SPUs foreground moral values, social hierarchy and collective expectations. The paper concludes that somatic idioms form an important part of linguoculture and that their cultural load must be taken into account in translation and foreign language teaching