Children's Metaphoric Expressions- the Meaning of Friendship

The purpose of this research is to analyze children’s concepts of friendship.Through their symbolic representations, children can demonstrate what they know, what they experience in their families and in the societies where... [ view full abstract ]

The purpose of this research is to analyze children’s concepts of friendship.Through their symbolic representations, children can demonstrate what they know, what they experience in their families and in the societies where they live. Many experiences of young children are grounded in and influenced by environmental factors described by Bronfenbrenner (2004) in his ecological theory as different systems.  Ethnographic research using Spradley’s (1979) theory of meaning shows that meanings are derived from symbolically coded concepts. Each symbol has references that can help uncover the meaning hidden in the metaphor where X- is a symbol and Y is a reference. In his research, symbolic meanings are analyzed by analyzing children’s drawings and comments on the topic /concept of ‘friendship’. The researcher asked children to draw a picture of friends and asked 3 questions:  'What did you draw?' 'Why are they friends'? and 'A friend is like….'. Forty three children attending the Child Development and Learning Laboratory at a Midwest University in the USA and another forty-tree children attended from the University Laboratory at one of the central cities of Poland served as a population for this study. The results demonstrated that children in both countries were able to draw how many friends they had and differentiated them from playmates. In the USA, children associated friendship with helping another person and secondly with playing with someone. In Poland, children associated friendship with playing and smiling.

The significance of these findings is that even the very young children understand the meaning of friendship and can distinguish who their friends are.   Young children also are able to provide specific connotations of the term 'friend'.

Key words: Friendship, metaphore