Human communication is multimodal: meaning is distributed across words, prosody, gaze, facial expression, gesture, and posture (Kendon, 2004). Facial displays are systematically tied to emotion and social judgment, even when they are strategically controlled (Ekman & Friesen, 1971). Languages reflect this multimodality not only through descriptive vocabulary but also through stable expressions that name “recognizable” bodily acts and attach conventional interpretations to them. In phraseology, the body becomes a culturally readable sign, and the phraseological unit functions as a compressed interpretation of that sign.

From a linguoculturological viewpoint, phraseology is among the most culture-saturated layers of vocabulary because phraseological meaning is frequently based on imagery, evaluation, and scenario knowledge (Dobrovol’skij & Piirainen, 2005). Uzbek phraseographic tradition formulates this explicitly in the academic Uzbek phraseological dictionary, where phraseologisms are treated as figurative units refined in linguistic consciousness and connected to national values and communicative functions.

In this analysis, nonverbal-action phraseologisms are understood as stable expressions that either denote a bodily act as a communicative move (wink, bow one’s head, fold one’s hands) or extend the bodily act into an evaluative social meaning (indifference, restraint, irritation). Their semantics is “embodied” because it is anchored in visible movement, yet it is “linguocultural” because the movement is interpreted through locally shared scripts of interaction (Sharifian, 2017; Kovecses, 2010). Analytically, each unit can be reconstructed as a minimal scenario that includes participants, a bodily form, a pragmatic intention, and an expected social effect.

The empirical base of the discussion is, first, Uzbek phraseographic material. The Uzbek phraseological dictionary includes 5,198 units and functions as a national reference for figurative meanings and usage patterns. One of the clearest cases where bodily form and cultural script intersect is facial movement and gaze. Consider the Uzbek unit ko‘z qisib qo‘ymoq ‘to wink’. In the academic dictionary it is recorded as a stable unit, and the explanation shows that meaning is not exhausted by the physical act: the wink functions as a tacit signal – of shared understanding, collusion, familiarity, or flirtation – depending on situation (Rahmatullaev et al., 2022, 254). English to wink can also signal complicity or playful alignment, yet its pragmatic “range” is not identical. In contexts where Uzbek communicative norms demand more explicit distance (e.g., between younger and older interlocutors, or in formal public interaction), the wink may be socially riskier and more strongly marked than in many English-speaking contexts, which affects how the phraseological unit is interpreted and when it is pragmatically licensed.

Posture-based units show an equally informative pattern. The Uzbek phraseological unit qo‘l qovushtirib turmoq, literally ‘to stand with folded hands’, is glossed with an evaluative sense of passivity: remaining inactive or failing to help while action is required (Rahmatullaev et al., 2022, 429). The negative evaluation is explicit. Yet the bodily image is culturally complex because folding hands in front is also recognizable as an etiquette posture in deferential stances before elders or in ceremonial settings. Linguoculturologically, this creates a layered meaning: the surface posture can index respect in one interactional script, while the idiomatic interpretation criticizes passivity in another script. The phraseological unit thus activates a culturally familiar bodily form and then reorients it toward moral evaluation.

Common English expressions illustrate how bodily action becomes stance and evaluation through conventional inference: to raise an eyebrow signals doubt, to shrug one’s shoulders signals non-commitment, to bite one’s lip signals restraint, to keep a stiff upper lip signals-controlled emotion, to give someone the cold shoulder signals social distance. Uzbek has comparable descriptive resources, yet its phraseological layer often carries stronger relational and ethical evaluation: bodily acts are frequently interpreted through norms of propriety, respect, shame, and responsibility toward others. This difference does not imply that English lacks relational meanings or Uzbek lacks stance meanings; rather, it suggests that the phraseological system tends to conventionalize different “default” evaluations for bodily behavior.

Ceremonial contexts sharpen linguocultural specificity because rituals are saturated with scripted movements. Qodirova’s comparison of English and Uzbek paralinguistic elements in ceremonies emphasizes that gestures, posture, facial expression, and symbolic movements index role, respect, and ritual intention, and they are interpreted through community-specific knowledge (Qodirova, 2025). Phraseological units that name, recall, or metaphorically extend such movements can therefore be read as linguistic traces of ritualized behavior. In contrastive work, this is methodologically important: if a phraseological unit is rooted in a culturally salient ceremonial script, its translation requires not only lexical substitution but also reconstruction of the ritual meaning that motivates evaluation.

Professional communication provides another layer where nonverbal behavior becomes normatively evaluated. In a Lingvospektr study on English professional communication, Nosirova argues that nonverbal means (mimics, gestures, bodily movement, proxemics) affect perceived trust and communicative efficiency in professions such as teaching, medicine, journalism, and law (Nosirova, 2025). For linguoculturology, this is relevant because institutional discourse tends to standardize acceptable bodily behavior and to treat deviation as either incompetence or ethical failure. When such evaluations become repeatable, language is likely to stabilize them through recurrent formulations, and phraseology begins to act as a normative “memory” of professional interaction.

Nonverbal-action phraseologisms also enter multimodal discourse, where the interaction between verbal and bodily meaning is direct. In film, gesture and facial expression may carry information not repeated in dialogue, and translation must decide whether such information is preserved, adapted, or left implicit. Ahmedova argues that nonverbal components in film discourse constitute a crucial semantic layer and that audiovisual translation may under-interpret these cues, producing losses of meaning – especially when humor, irony, or culturally bound behavior is at stake (Ahmedova, 2025). From a linguoculturological angle, film material is valuable because it foregrounds the interpretive work that phraseological units perform: viewers infer stance and relationship from bodily actions, and idiomatic language often supplies a ready-made label for that inference.

From the translation perspective, the key question is which component carries the core meaning: the bodily form, the social evaluation, or the cultural script. If form and script align, near-literal equivalence is possible (to bite one’s lip ~ labini tishlamoq). If the form aligns but the script diverges, pragmatic adaptation is safer (a wink can be jocular, flirtatious, or conspiratorial depending on culture and context). If the script aligns but the form differs, an idiomatic substitute that is culturally natural may be preferable to a formally close rendering. In all three cases, the linguoculturological task is the same: to preserve the intended social reading of the body, not merely the description of movement.

The contrastive picture suggests three generalizations. First, both English and Uzbek rely heavily on face, head, and hand movements as imagery sources, reflecting interactional salience and perceptual accessibility. Second, Uzbek units tend to attach stronger relational and ethical evaluation to bodily behavior, linking nonverbal action to propriety, responsibility, and respect, while English units more often highlight individual stance – skepticism, emotional control, ironic distance – without eliminating relational meanings. Third, translation risk is highest when an expression is anchored in a culturally specific script (ritual, etiquette, hierarchy), because the bodily form can be understood cross-culturally while the evaluation is not automatically shared.

In conclusion, phraseological units denoting nonverbal actions reveal an especially transparent connection between language, body, and culture. Their meanings begin with visible movement, yet they stabilize as culturally shared interpretations of that movement. The English–Uzbek comparison shows that embodied imagery may be comparable across languages, while pragmatic licensing and cultural scripts differ systematically. For linguoculturology, such units are valuable because they make cultural norms observable in lexicalized form: the community’s interpretations of gesture, posture, and gaze are not only practiced in interaction but also stored and transmitted through phraseology.