Linguocultural Features of Phraseological Units in Azerbaijani and French
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.69760/aghel.026002014Keywords:
phraseological units, linguoculturology, Azerbaijani, French, comparative phraseology, cultural semantics, idiomsAbstract
This study investigates the linguocultural features of phraseological units in Azerbaijani and French, focusing on how idiomatic expressions encode cultural values, worldviews, and social norms specific to each linguistic community. Adopting a corpus-based comparative approach, the research analyzes a purposively selected corpus of 120 phraseological units drawn from authoritative phraseological dictionaries, literary texts, and contemporary written sources in both languages. The analysis examines structural, semantic, and cultural dimensions of the selected units, with particular attention to cases of full equivalence, partial equivalence, and lacunarity. The findings reveal that while both languages share a number of universal conceptual domains — including family relations, natural phenomena, time, and moral values — the cultural coding of these domains through phraseological form is largely language-specific. Azerbaijani phraseology reflects nomadic and agrarian heritage, Islamic values, and oral folk tradition, whereas French phraseology bears the imprint of Greco-Roman antiquity, Christian culture, and a long literary tradition. The study argues that phraseological units constitute a primary repository of linguocultural memory and that cross-linguistic comparison of such units offers a productive methodology for the analysis of cultural cognition. These findings have implications for lexicography, translation studies, and foreign language teaching.
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