CONCEPTUAL METAPHORS AND CULTURAL COGNITION IN ENGLISH AND UZBEK IDIOMS: A CORPUS-BASED COMPARATIVE STUDY

Idioms represent one of the most culturally marked components of language, reflecting collective experience, conceptual thinking, and national worldview. Although English and Uzbek idioms have been examined from phraseological and semantic perspectives, comparatively little attention has been devoted to their conceptual metaphorical foundations and cultural cognition within an integrated corpus-based framework. This study investigates the conceptual, semantic, and cultural characteristics of English and Uzbek idioms through the lens of Cognitive Linguistics and Conceptual Metaphor Theory. Drawing upon authentic idiomatic expressions from contemporary English and Uzbek corpora, dictionaries, and literary texts, the research identifies dominant conceptual domains shared by both languages while highlighting culture-specific metaphorical patterns. A qualitative comparative approach is complemented by corpus-based observations to examine semantic equivalence, metaphorical motivation, pragmatic usage, and translation challenges.