COGNITIVE AND CULTURAL INTERPRETATION OF METAPHORICAL ANIMAL IMAGES IN THE TURKISH AND UKRAINIAN LINGUISTIC SPACES

Abstract

The article presents a comparative cognitive-cultural study of zoomorphic metaphors in Turkish and Ukrainian, which function as a means of verbalizing the ethnic worldview of the respective communities. The analysis focuses on metaphorical names of domestic animals that, in figurative usage, denote human qualities. A corpus of 38 lexical units – 18 from each language – has been identified and categorized into universal, unique, equivalent, equivalently synonymous, antonymous, and non-equivalent zoomorphisms. The study is grounded in dictionary definitions, contextual examples from literary sources, and current linguistic theories of semantic and cultural analysis.Special attention is paid to the national encoding of animal imagery and the stereotyping of zoosemantics within the linguistic consciousness of Turkish and Ukrainian speakers. Zoomorphic metaphor is shown to be a significant element of idiomaticity, evaluative expression, and person conceptualization through animal traits. Metaphorical modeling based on such traits reflects collective cultural memory, activates symbolic archetypes, social stereotypes, and the axiological framework of the ethnos.The findings reveal the deep integration of zoomorphic metaphors into the linguistic worldview, highlighting their functional diversity, emotional connotation, and capacity to convey national values through linguistic means.Future research is expected to expand the material by including metaphorical representations of wild animals in both Turkish and Ukrainian, enabling deeper cross-cultural analysis of zoosemic connotations.