Metaphoric Expressions of the Students about the Concept of Happiness

Abstract

This study aims to reveal the views of students about the concept of happiness through metaphors. The study was designed in descriptive model and analysed with metaphor analysis, a qualitative research method. 188 students who were selected by snowball sampling technique and studying in secondary and high schools constituted the sample of the study. The data collected through a semi-structured interview form was analyzed by content analysis. The results show that the students defined happiness and happiness at school as “a temporary, hard to reach, an increasing and enriching feeling and a state of freedom.” However, , it was also revealed that while the metaphors produced by students about happiness have more positive characteristics; the metaphors produced for the concept of happiness at school have mostly negative characteristics. In this sense, the students described happiness at school with such characteristics as “temporary, impossible, hard to reach, changeable, virtual and defined it as a state of obligation, despair, dependence, loneliness, a form of obligatory relationship and an expression of negative experience and produced metaphors in accordance with these.