Somatic Concepts in the Kazakh Language: Embodied Cognition and Cultural Conceptualization

Kamar Aldasheva, A.S. Nabidullin, D. Abdrakhmanov

2026

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DOI 10.55491/2411-6076-2026-3-57-70
Data confidence 70 medium
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Abstract

This study offers a comparative-cognitive analysis of somatic concepts in the Kazakh language within the framework of embodied cognition, one of the actively developing areas of contemporary cognitive linguistics. The theory's roots in early twentieth-century American pragmatism (W. James, J. Dewey) and its systematic elaboration by G. Lakoff and M. Johnson are outlined briefly as historical and theoretical background rather than as a sustained analytical framework in their own right. The study's central aim is to examine how the Lakoff-Johnson concept of the “unity of body and mind” is manifested through somatic metaphors in Kazakh, and to consider what this material suggests about the cross-cultural validity of image-schema models built largely on WEIRD (Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, Democratic) linguistic data. Drawing on lexicographic and corpus sources for English and Kazakh, the study applies conceptual metaphor analysis, a comparative cross-cultural method, and an author-developed three-stage procedure of cognitive mapping to compare somatic expressions built around the concepts of hand, heart/liver, stomach, back, head, foot, and eye. The comparative analysis indicates that the two languages share a set of underlying image schemas (CONTAINER, PATH, BALANCE, INSTRUMENT), while differing in how these schemas are culturally elaborated: the Kazakh material shows a comparatively stronger orientation toward kinship, social responsibility, and ethical evaluation. These findings extend the empirical base of embodied-cognition research beyond predominantly English-language material and offer a linguistically grounded starting point for culturally sensitive approaches to Kazakh-language natural-language processing.