An Analysis Of Nobel Prize Presentation Speech From The Perspective Of Grammatical Metaphor

Metaphor, a common linguistic phenomenon, has a long history in human life. The study of it can be traced back to more than two thousand years ago in ancient Greece. It was regarded as the variation on the lexical level by traditional theory. Halliday asserts that metaphor on the lexicogrammatical level can be texted and terms it "grammatical metaphor". His interpretation of grammatical metaphor is the variation of the expression, in which the transference from one grammatical domain to another is getting involved. Halliday makes a classification of grammatical metaphor:ideational grammatical metaphor and interpersonal grammatical metaphor, which are in line with ideational and interpersonal function of the three metafunctions. But he ignores textual grammatical metaphor. Martin recognizes the existence of textual metaphors and thus integrates the theory.The present study aims at Nobel Prize presentation speech. Major realizations of grammatical metaphor are figured out to summarize functions of grammatical metaphor in Nobel Prize presentation speech.Ideational, interpersonal and textual grammatical metaphor find their abundance in Nobel Prize presentation speech. Ideational grammatical metaphor is conductive to evaluating prize winners'achievements by nominalization and adjectivalization; interpersonal grammatical metaphor can answer self-imposed questions for addresser-audience-interaction and create as an impersonal tone for speeches'objectivity and neutrality; textual grammatical metaphor helps to achieve cohesion and coherence in Nobel Prize presentation speech.