The Codification of National-Cultural Stereotypes Through Etalons of Comparisons: A Contrastive Study of English and Karakalpak Languages

Abstract

 This article examines the codification of national-cultural stereotypes through the etalons of comparison in English and Karakalpak linguocultures from a contrastive linguocultural perspective. Stable comparisons are regarded as one of the principal means of verbalizing culturally significant knowledge, since their figurative standards preserve and transmit the values, stereotypes, and worldview of a linguistic community. The study aims to identify the national-cultural specificity of comparison etalons and to determine their thematic distribution in both languages. The research is based on a corpus of 600 English and 1,000 Karakalpak stable comparisons extracted by continuous sampling from authoritative phraseological and explanatory dictionaries. The analysis employs descriptive, comparative, linguocultural, semantic, and quantitative-statistical methods. Following the thematic classification proposed by F. Usmanov, the comparisons were grouped into five categories: Fauna, Realities of Everyday Life, Phenomena and Elements of Nature, Flora, and Folklore Characters. The quantitative analysis demonstrates that fauna constitutes the most productive thematic source in both languages (35% in English and 32% in Karakalpak), confirming the universal cognitive role of animal imagery in conceptualizing human qualities. At the same time, Karakalpak comparisons show a higher frequency of ethnoculturally marked everyday realities and natural phenomena, reflecting the influence of nomadic traditions, the natural environment, and material culture. English comparisons reveal a greater tendency toward pragmatic and object-oriented conceptualization, emphasizing everyday experience and observable reality. Although both languages display similar cognitive models in the distribution of thematic groups, the internal semantic content of comparison etalons reflects distinct national-cultural values, historical experience, and cultural codes. The findings contribute to the development of contrastive phraseology, linguoculturology, cognitive linguistics, and intercultural communication by demonstrating how stable comparisons encode culturally specific stereotypes while simultaneously revealing universal mechanisms of figurative conceptualization.