Pronalaženje idiomatskog ključa: Doslovna i prenesena obilježja idioma

This thesis explores the connectedness of literal and figurative aspects of idioms, with a primary focus on the idiomatic key — the core constituent of an idiom that evokes its figurative meaning. Although idiomatic language is included in EFL learning materials, it is often overlooked in terms of effective teaching methods and students’ active use. However, idiomatic competence plays an important role in understanding authentic language content and it is needed for developing both reading and listening comprehension, as well as fluency and communicative competence in English. The purpose of this research was to compare two groups of Croatian 7th-grade primary school students and 1st-grade secondary school students in terms of their perception of the idiomatic key and the assessment of its meaning. The research was conducted using a questionnaire which contained 12 idioms. The results indicate that a high percentage of both groups of participants perceived the same word as the idiomatic key, aligning with the conceptual metaphor theory, which suggests that familiar, concrete source domains help individuals comprehend abstract target domains. Participants predominantly identified nouns as the idiomatic key rather than verbs or adjectives. This is consistent with theoretical frameworks suggesting that nouns, conceptualized as concrete and easily recalled entities, are more prone to reification. In contrast, verbs and adjectives function more relationally and are often context-dependent. Additionally, idioms in which verbs were the main constituents proved to be more transparent in conveying their figurative meaning than nouns. While adjectives denote different properties, they might be challenging to process due to their polysemous nature and frequent metaphorical usage.