GENDER STEREOTYPES IN ENGLISH AND UZBEK METAPHORICAL EXPRESSIONS: A COGNITIVE, AXIOLOGICAL, AND CROSS-CULTURAL MASTER THESIS

This extensive study presents a comprehensive cross-cultural and cognitive-linguistic analysis of gender stereotypes embedded within the metaphorical systems of the English and Uzbek languages. Grounded in George Lakoff and Mark Johnson’s Conceptual Metaphor Theory (CMT) and the foundational principles of modern sociolinguistics, this research systematically decodes how masculinity and femininity are mentally mapped, evaluatively weighted (axiology), and socially maintained in two linguistically and historically divergent cultures. Operating on a corpus of 1,200 lexical units, idioms, proverbs, and literary excerpts pulled from classical and contemporary dictionaries and canonical literature (including William Shakespeare, Charlotte Brontë, Abdulla Qodiriy, and Abdulhamid Cho‘lpon), this paper explores the structural mechanisms behind gendered objectification, naturalization, and spatial containment.