PHRASEOLOGICAL REPRESENTATIONS OF YOUTH AND OLD AGE: A CROSS-LINGUISTIC ANALYSIS

The present study aims to examine the phraseological representations of youth and old age in English and Uzbek, revealing the cultural, semantic, and metaphorical layers embedded within idiomatic expressions related to human age. Through a comparative linguistic approach, the research identifies shared and distinct patterns of how youth and old age are conceptualized, metaphorized, and evaluated in the two languages. Findings demonstrate that while both languages utilize metaphor and evaluation to categorize human life stages, cultural attitudes significantly influence the formation and usage of age-related idioms. This article contributes to cross-cultural phraseology, cognitive linguistics, and intercultural communication studies.