Linguistic Features Specific To “Freedom” Concept In “Narrative of A Journey from Heraut To Khiva, Moscow, And St. Petersburgh…” By James Abbot

This article explores the concept of freedom among the peoples of Central Asia through the lens of the travelogue of English traveller James Abbott, Narrative of a Journey from Heraut to Khiva, Moscow, and St Petersburgh during the Late Russian Invasion of Khiva: With Some Account of the Court of Khiva and the kingdom of Khaurism. Abbott’s journey to Central Asia and Russia in 1839 reveals political intrigues between Russia and Great Britain, as well as his observations of the everyday lives of the local population. Using methods of qualitative text analysis in cognitive linguistics, particularly Lakoff and Johnson’s (1980) theory of conceptual metaphors, we tried to identify how language reflects perceptions of freedom, autonomy, and rights in cultural contexts. The paper highlights the role of bodily experience in shaping abstract concepts such as freedom, illustrated by examples from Abbott’s travelogue.