Semantic and Linguocultural Analysis of Proverbs With the Concept “Man” in Uzbek and English

This article examines the semantic structure and linguocultural specificity of proverbs that verbalize the concept “man” in the Uzbek and English paremiological fund. Proceeding from the premise that proverbs condense a community’s normative image of the world, the study asks which qualities, duties and social roles are ascribed to the male figure in each tradition and how these are encoded linguistically. The results show that Uzbek proverbs construct masculinity predominantly through collective and relational categories, whereas English proverbs more often foreground individual agency, privacy, property and the man’s relationship to fate and work. The findings contribute to comparative paremiology, gender linguistics and linguoculturology, and may be used in translation studies and the teaching of Uzbek and English as foreign languages.