Selected idioms with the Polish word oko (English eye) in the language of school youth

Małgorzata Święcicka

Eliza Tarary

Abstract

This article is an attempt at showing the ways of functioning of selected phrases in the language of young people. This analysis covers student’s interpretations of somatisms with the EYE component (to pull the wool over somebody’s eyes, eyeball to eyeball, to have blinders on, to be the apple of somebody’s eye, somebody’s eyes popped). With the use of the principles of cognitive grammar, semantic structures of these phrases have been constructed. Dictionary definitions are the starting point for the assessment of the ways of understanding the meaning. Owing to the semantic analysis, the following interpretations of meanings have been specified: concretizations, generalizations, asemantizations, dephraseologizations, defining one phrase with the use of another one (not always semantically identical).