LINGUISTIC AND CULTURAL CONVERGENCE IN METAPHORS OF UZBEK AND ENGLISH LANGUAGES

Abstract

The interrelationship between language, culture, and cognition has been a subject of linguistic research since the time of Wilhelm von Humboldt. He emphasized that language is intricately linked to humanity’s spiritual development and reflects every stage of cultural progression. This perspective laid the groundwork for the development of linguistic cultural studies, which explore the cultural backdrop of communicative spaces through the prism of language and speech. Despite the emergence of new fields like cognitive linguistics, the intricate relationship between language, culture, and cognition remains underexplored. This paper focuses on metaphor as a point of convergence between these domains, especially in the context of Uzbek and English. Language, therefore, is not only a communicative tool but also a mirror of the cultural and intellectual development of a society. The theoretical frameworks laid down by scholars such as Cassirer, Vico, and Ricoeur support the claim that metaphors are embedded deeply in our perception of the world. Cultural metaphors reflect how societies categorize experiences, emotions, and abstract ideas in different ways, thereby making them a key component of cross-cultural linguistic research.