METAPHORICAL REPRESENTATION OF HUMAN AND SOCIAL RELATIONS: A COMPARATIVE-PRAGMATIC ANALYSIS OF GAFUR GULAM'S AND MARK TWAIN'S WORKS

Abstract

This article provides a comparative-pragmatic and linguacultural analysis of the metaphorical representation of human and social relations in two seminal picaresque and realistic masterpieces of childhood: Gafur Gulam’s "Shum Bola" ("The Mischievous Boy", 1936) and Mark Twain’s "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer" (1876). While childhood is traditionally viewed through the lens of innocence, both authors deploy the mischievous child protagonist as a subversive, pragmatic lens to navigate and critique adult social hierarchies, class disparity, and cultural institutions. Drawing upon Conceptual Metaphor Theory (CMT) by Lakoff and Johnson, alongside socio-pragmatic frameworks (such as Grice’s cooperative principles, face-work, and politeness theory), this study examines how metaphorical language represents and negotiates power, inequality, and survival in early 20th-century Uzbekistan and late 19th-century America. The analysis reveals how Gulam utilizes collectivistic, "bazaar-centric" and survival-based metaphors to expose the harsh social stratification of pre-revolutionary Uzbekistan, whereas Twain utilizes individualistic, romantic, and transactional metaphors to satarize the moral complacency and religious/legalistic rigidities of American frontier society. The study concludes that metaphorical representation in both works serves a dual pragmatic function: masking harsh socio-economic realities while subversively negotiating the power imbalances between the marginalized child and the dominant adult world.