Abstract
This article examines and compares the associative meanings of animal-related lexical items that possess culturally marked connotations and are actively used in everyday communication in Kazakh, English, and Chinese. The analyzed lexical units are classified into three groups: (1) words with similar cultural connotations; (2) words with different or even opposite cultural connotations; and (3) words that share the same conceptual meaning but carry cultural connotations in one language while lacking them in another. The study identifies pig, snake, and rooster as animals with identical or similar cultural connotations across the three languages; dog, owl, cat, and bat as animals with divergent cultural connotations; and ostrich, silkworm, crane, fish, Bactrian camel, and locust as animals whose cultural connotations are present in some languages but absent in others. The associative meanings of these lexical items are analyzed comparatively, revealing both similarities and differences. Furthermore, the cultural connotations of animal-related words in Kazakh, English, and Chinese are substantiated through idiomatic expressions, set phrases, and proverbs. The primary aim of the study is to enhance mutual understanding between different peoples and cultures and to help overcome communicative difficulties. In addition, the research contributes to the development of ethnolinguistics, cognitive linguistics, linguocultural studies, paralinguistics, and pragmalinguistics by offering a comprehensive and modern approach to language analysis.