ŻYCIE w metaforach uczniowskich

Abstract

The author understands metaphor primarily as a phenomenon of thinking and only secondarily as a language phenomenon. Therefore she tries to answer the following questions: what does a young speaker of Polish associate the word life with, what kind of knowledge about life becomes fixed in pupils* metaphors, what kind of associations and connotations of the word life are included in metaphorical constructions used by students of secondary school and the sixth form? The presented metaphors enabled to show different meaning shades of the analyzed category. By means of reference to things, phenomena, objects well known to the youth and so making the notion concrete, it becomes tame in a way, e.g. life is a road full of bends and potholes, life is a box of chocolates - you never know what you will meet, life is a wonderful gift from our Creator. These and other metaphorical construction revealed not only what students know and tell about life, but first of all what they think and experience for people tell about their experience of the world.