Ideational Grammatical Metaphors. Applications in Selected Registers E-Book

Gabriele Grenkowski

• Herausgeber: GRIN Verlag
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2016

Beschreibung

Seminar paper from the year 2015 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Linguistics, grade: 2,3, RWTH Aachen University (Institut für Anglistik, Amerikanistik und Romanistik), course: Hauptseminar "Metaphor in cognitive and systemic-functional frameworks", language: English, abstract: This term paper deals with the topic of grammatical metaphors, with a special focus on grammatical metaphors of the ideational kind and their use in certain registers. To define grammatical metaphor, as well as explain and analyze their use, I will take a closer look at the works of several researchers and linguists, with M.A.K. Halliday being the most important one of these. Given it was Halliday who first coined the term “grammatical metaphor” and tried to give a detailed explanation of the concept, his works will be the most vital to this paper and stand at its center. Further, it is impossible to take a detailed look on grammatical metaphor without having at least a basic understanding on Halliday’s concept of Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL). Therefore, one chapter of this paper will take a closer look at SFL and basically explain this concept. The questions this paper is supposed to answer are the following: what are ideational grammatical metaphors, in which registers are they used most frequently, and what is the purpose or function of such metaphors in these registers?

Leseprobe

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Table of Contents

1 Introduction

2 Systemic Functional Linguistics

2.1 Grammatical Metaphor

2.1.1 Types of Grammatical Metaphors

2.2 Halliday’s Transitivity System

2.3 Nominalization

3 Uses of Ideational Grammatical Metaphor in Certain Registers

3.1 Ideational Grammatical Metaphor in Scientific Texts

3.1.1 Objectivity

3.1.2 Condensation

3.1.3 Higher information density/lexical density

3.1.4 Technicality and Rationality

3.1.5 Examples

3.2 Ideational Grammatical Metaphor in Political Speech

3.2.1 The speeches of George W. Bush

3.2.2 The speeches of Barrack Obama

3.2.3 Functions of IGM in Political Texts

4 Summary and Conclusion

5 Sources

1 Introduction

This term paper deals with the topic of grammatical metaphors, with a special focus on grammatical metaphors of the ideational kind and their use in certain registers.

To define grammatical metaphor, as well as explain and analyze their use, I will take a closer look at the works of several researchers and linguists, with M.A.K. Halliday being the most important one of these. Given it was Halliday who first coined the term “grammatical metaphor” and tried to give a detailed explanation of the concept, his works will be the most vital to this paper and stand at its center. Further, it is impossible to take a detailed look on grammatical metaphor without having at least a basic understanding on Halliday’s concept of Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL). Therefore, one chapter of this paper will take a closer look at SFL and basically explain this concept.

The questions this paper is supposed to answer are the following: what are ideational grammatical metaphors, in which registers are they used most frequently, and what is the purpose or function of such metaphors in these registers?

2 Systemic Functional Linguistics

The concept of systemic functional linguistics was developed by M.A.K Halliday in the 1960s. Halliday’s approach to language differs from most other approaches in that it does not analyze language as a mental process, but rather in alignment with sociological approaches. It is more concerned with what language is used for rather than how language structured (see O’Donnell, 2011/12, p.2). Halliday himself said about his concept of a functional grammar:

“The aim has been to construct a grammar for purposes of text analysis: one that would make it possible to say sensible and useful things about any text, spoken or written, in modern English.” (Halliday 1994, p. xv)

To reach that aim, Halliday has constructed a system of describing language that is concerned with the functions of language. In this framework of SFL, language is simultaneously “a part of reality, a shaper of reality, and a metaphor for reality” (Halliday, 1993a, p. 8). Rather than as an alignment of nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs, in SFL a sentence is described in terms of participators, processes and circumstances. Halliday presents the following simple figure to show the relationship between semantics and lexicogrammar:

Typical realization of processes, participants and circumstances (taken from Halliday 1999, p. 55)

This realization can be shown with any sentence, for example the following:

“Because technology is getting better people can write business programs faster.” (taken from Halliday 1994, p. 349)

Here the adverbial group “because technology in getting faster” functions as circumstance, “people” as participant, “can write” as process, “programs” as another participant, and “faster” as a second circumstance.

This framework is important to understand at least basically when it comes to talking about grammatical metaphors, because those can only be explained within it. An important aspect of ideational grammatical metaphors it the so-called transitivity system, which is concerned with different types of processes. This system will be elaborated on in a later chapter of this paper.

2.1 Grammatical Metaphor

The term “grammatical metaphor” was first introduced by M.A.K. Halliday in 1985, in his work “An Introduction to Functional Grammar”. Generally, grammatical metaphor can be defined as an expression in which one grammatical class or structure was replaced with another. The meaning remains mostly unchanged, but in many cases the resulting sentence if shorter. An example would be the following:

1. “All organisms reproduce and sometimes when they reproduce, the children vary.”

2. “Reproduction with variation is a major characteristic of life.”