Idioms have long been of interest to research in linguistics as well as literary studies. In
the existing research however the aesthetic productivity of idiomatic ambiguity has never
been in focus. The present study on Idioms and Ambiguity in Context fills this gap by analyzing
a corpus of children's literature-traditionally characterized by a high measure of wordplay and
ambiguity-both in a linguistic and literary perspective. Looking at the connection between
context and understanding of idiomatic expressions in either their phrasal or their
compositional reading the study explores how ambiguity is activated if how and when it is
perceived on the different levels of communication and how literary texts use this ambiguity
in playful ways.
