A Metaphoric Examination of the Meaning of Marriage

The aim of this study is to investigate the meaning of the marriage concept for married, non-married, engaged and divorced participants through metaphor analysis. The answers to the following questions were sought in this research; 1. What are the metaphors about the meaning of marriage developed by married, non-married, engaged and divorced individuals? 2. How do the metaphors differ based on gender, education level, and marital status of participants? The study group was determined by the maximum variation sampling technique. In this study, the sample group consisted of 110 participants including 44 men and 66 women. Participants were divided into groups as 53 married, 50 single, and 5 divorced and 2 engaged individuals. The data were collected in Turkish through sentence completion exercises: “Marriage is like … because …”. An otherwise blank piece of paper with this sentence completion exercise at the top of the page was given to all the participants. The data were analyzed through metaphor analysis. According to the findings, the sample group produced 101 different valid metaphors from total of 110 people. These metaphors were grouped under 11 different conceptual categories considering their common traits. The results indicated that the participants described the meaning of marriage metaphorically as happiness, confidence, realism, productivity, effort-labor-struggle, frustration-deprivation, reciprocity-expectation, togetherness-solidarity, uncertainty-ambiguity, risk and development