Attitude Toward 'Hospitality' Proverbs in Different Periods: Analysis of Changes and Challenges

Abstract

Hospitality has long served as a normative moral value in many societies, and proverbs have functioned as concise vehicles for transmitting the ethical prescriptions connected with welcoming a guest. Yet proverbs are not static; their semantic load, pragmatic force, and frequency of use evolve in tandem with wider socio-economic and cultural transformations. This article investigates diachronic shifts in the treatment of “hospitality” proverbs in Uzbek, Russian, and English paremiological corpora covering the late nineteenth century, the Soviet and post-Soviet eras, and the contemporary globalized period. Relying on corpus-based frequency analysis, qualitative semantic comparison, and ethnographic interviews with thirty informants born between 1940 and 2005, the study traces how modernization, collectivist ideology, market reform, and digital communication have each altered both the resonance and the rhetorical deployment of canonical units. Results demonstrate a gradual attenuation of unqualified praise for limitless generosity and a parallel rise in cautionary subtexts that index economic scarcity and privacy concerns. The paper argues that these changes signal a broader recalibration of community boundaries and individual agency.