This chapter offers a Cultural Linguistic analysis of the conceptualisations of beard
and moustache in Hungarian proverbs. While facial hair is an underexploited field
in paremiology, the chapter argues that it is an appropriate concept for capturing
the cultural aspects of the figurative language collections of proverbs. The study
analyses 31 proverbs selected from five collections, where the identification process
of cultural conceptualisations involves conceptual analysis combined with drawing
on other linguistic evidence and culturally relevant ethnographic data. The results
show that the seven target concepts ( personality , manliness , independence , patriotism
, age , dignity , and wisdom ) are interconnected in the Hungarian cultural model
of man , and moustache has a dominance and more positive value in cultural cognition
as compared to beard . The study shows how the theoretical framework and methodological
tools of Cultural Linguistics can be used in studying the cultural elements of proverbs
and how they can enhance the understanding of their linkage to cultural models.
