THE CONCEPT «KNOWLEDGE» IN ENGLISH AND UZBEK PROVERBS: A COMPARATIVE LINGUOCULTURAL ANALYSIS OF ITS VALUE SEMANTICS

The article presents a comparative linguocultural analysis of the value semantics of the concept KNOWLEDGE as it is verbalized by English and Uzbek proverbs. The corpus consists of 150 paremiological units (80 English and 70 Uzbek) selected from authoritative paremiographic sources. The method of comparative concept analysis made it possible to establish four thematic groups of proverbs and to reveal both universal and nationally specific features of the axiological modeling of knowledge. It is proved that in both linguistic cultures knowledge is evaluated as the highest social and personal value; however, the English paremiological picture of the world emphasizes the pragmatic-instrumental usefulness of knowledge, whereas the Uzbek one sacralizes knowledge and links it inseparably with the figure of the teacher (ustoz) and with moral perfection. The results may be used in comparative paremiology, linguoculturology and foreign language teaching.