An Analysis of Image Schemas in Liravi Dialect Proverbs

Abstract

This study investigates image schemas in the proverbs of the Liravi dialect, aiming to reveal how lived experiences and the worldview of the community are encoded in linguistic and cultural structures. Within the framework of cognitive linguistics, language is seen as an embodiment of human perceptual and bodily interactions with the world, and proverbs, due to their brevity and metaphorical nature, provide an ideal domain for such exploration. A total of 171 proverbs were collected, of which 52 were identified as containing image schemas. The results indicated that all image schemas proposed by Evans and Green were present, yet their distribution was uneven. The force schema was the most frequent with 36 percent, followed by unity/multiplicity at 15 percent and container at 13 percent, while the balance schema occurred least often at only 3 percent. The analysis suggests that the geographical, occupational, and cultural conditions of the Liravi region play a crucial role in foregrounding certain schemas such as force and motion, whereas concepts like balance are less emphasized. These findings highlight that Liravi proverbs simultaneously reflect universal cognitive structures and localized cultural specificities. Thus, their study not only enriches the understanding of the region’s linguistic and cultural heritage but also contributes new evidence to the fields of cognitive linguistics and anthropology.