Investigating Floral Metonymies In Uzbek And English Languages

This study investigates the lingvocultural and cognitive-semantic patterns of floral metonymy — metonymic expressions derived from the names and attributes of plants, flowers, and botanical entities — in Uzbek and English. Floral metonymy represents a culturally rich domain in which universal cognitive schemas interact with language-specific and culture-specific associations grounded in agricultural tradition, literary heritage, religious symbolism, and material culture. A corpus of 360 floral metonymic expressions (180 Uzbek, 180 English) was assembled from literary prose, poetry, journalistic texts, folklore, and proverb collections. Expressions were analysed using Radden and Kövecses' (1999) ICM-based taxonomy, Panther and Thornburg's (2003) functional-pragmatic framework, and Kövecses' (2002) conceptual analysis of cultural models. Comparative-typological, contextual, componential, and lingvocultural analysis methods were applied. Floral metonymies in both languages operate within shared ICMs including PLANT FOR ITS PRODUCT, FLOWER FOR BEAUTY/YOUTH, and PLANT FOR ITS ORIGIN/CULTURAL ASSOCIATION. Uzbek demonstrates significantly higher rates of rose (atirgul/gul) metonymies encoding beauty, beloved persons, and spiritual perfection, consistent with the Persian-Uzbek Sufi poetic tradition. English exhibits greater diversity in botanical source domains and higher frequency of institutional/commercial floral metonymies. Culture-specific Uzbek floral metonymies encode Islamic symbolism, national identity, and traditional agricultural life. Floral metonymy in Uzbek is deeply embedded in a Persianate literary-spiritual tradition, while English floral metonymy is more culturally diverse and commercially oriented. The findings illuminate the intersection of universal cognitive mechanisms and culturally particularised conceptual systems in botanical semantic domains.

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