A Content Analysis for Water İdioms: Water Reflections in the Language

Abstract

Objective: Water, which has been intertwined with the life of human beings since its existence, has also found a wide place with proverbs and idioms in spoken language. In this study, it is aimed to perform content analysis in terms of the thematic qualities of the water idioms that we still use frequently in daily life. Methods: The data of this study, which is of qualitative research type, were obtained online between the dates of 01 and 30 August 2019. Web pages containing “idioms of water” detected using a search engine of internet were examined one by one. A data repository was created by collecting the statements on the web page. After the data collection was completed, similar idioms collected from different web pages were removed from the pool. The remaining idioms were subjected to content analysis to generate thematic classification. In content analysis, idioms were categorized under eight headings in terms of their thematic qualities such as the object, event and mood they convey. These titles consisted of dissatisfaction, negativity, skill, appreciate, anger, time, money and cleaning. Results: A total of twenty two “Turkish idioms” web pages were found within the scope of the research period. Three of them belonged to official institutions and the remaining nineteen web pages belonged to personal and commercial web pages. The idioms expressing “dissatisfaction” take the first place with a share of 26.1% in a total of 88 water-containing idioms, whereas “negativity (19.3%)”, “skill (13.6%)”, “appreciate (%) 12.5)”, “money (9.1%)”, “anger (8.0%)”, “time (5.7%)” and “cleaning (5.7%)” were followed. Conclusion: In general, the rate of water idioms that mean “good/positive” is slightly more than a quarter of the total. Whereas, water idioms qualified “bad/negative” were found twice as much. The fact that, in the past, water was abundant, easily consumable and was defined by cheap qualities may have created this situation. However, for a country heading towards water scarcity, the intergenerational transmission of this idioms and perception about value of water can be expected to turn into opposite expressions in the future. © 2020, Turk Hijyen ve Deneysel Biyoloji Dergisi. All Rights Reserved.