«Nå har jeg tatt meg selv i nakken, og nå handler det om å holde hodet kaldt!»« En undersøkelse av videregående elevers forståelse av kroppslige idiomer i norsk.

Abstract

Background: Idioms can be considered as an interesting, but complex linguistic phenomena, which occurs frequently both in written and spoken language. Idioms can be found in a variety of different texts, such as papers, debates, speaks etc. Despite being frequent in the language, little attention has been paid to idioms in school and in the Norwegian subject in high school. Previous research shows that students have little knowledge of and lack basic understanding of idioms. Never the less, more focus should be paid to high school students’ knowledge of idioms. To gain knowledge of how high school students understand idioms, and what factors that contribute to a greater understanding, would be an interesting study object. Aim:This master ́s thesis studieshow high school students understand bodily idioms. Little research exists on this topic in a Norwegian context. Methods:This study has a quantitative research approach, where closed question form is used as an instrument for data collection method. 69 high school students are participants in the study. Results and conclusion: The study has shown that high school students understand bodily idioms well, though the participants show greater understanding forsome of the idioms, than for others. Characteristics of the different idioms can be used as an explanation of this.The results also show that there are individual variations among the participants, which can indicate that the participants possess varied degree of language competence. The findings from the study can have implications for how teachers can teach idioms to students in school.