Research On Metaphors Of Mood In English Economic Speeches

Ever since Aristotle put forward the concept of metaphor, the research on metaphor has received significant attention by rhetoricians, philosophers and linguistics. From 1990s, many domestic and foreign scholars have studied metaphor in various degrees. Halliday introduced metaphor into the field of grammar, brought forth his idea of Grammatical Metaphor, and pointed out the congruent form and the metaphorical form of mood for speech function. As soon as this concept was put forth, it has drawn wide attention and discussion of domestic and foreign scholars, especially Systemic Functional linguists.With the accelerated pace of the world globalization, linguists are more concerned about economic speeches, especially about metaphors and hedges in the economic speeches. Besides, some scholars have done critical discourse analysis on economic speeches. However, in the study of metaphors in economic speeches, scholars pay more attention to the conceptual metaphors, and the research on metaphors of mood mainly involves in political speeches and advertising discourses, and seldom dealt with in economic speeches.From a more microscopic point of view, this thesis takes the theory of metaphors of mood in Halliday's Functional Grammar as the theoretical framework, analyzes the six types of metaphors of mood in English economic speeches: declarative mood to reflect question and command, interrogative mood to reflect statement and command, imperative mood to reflect statement and question. Moreover, the present study discusses the three functions of metaphors of mood: politeness, consultation, textual cohesion. The results show that the theory of metaphors of mood in Systemic Functional grammar can provide a multi-level, multi-functional theory framework for discourse analysis, revealing the rationale for selecting metaphors of mood in English economic speeches, showing how language forms combine with functions to achieve different communicative purposes. This analysis can help people deepen their understanding and perception of English economic speeches, so as to improve their comprehension of economic speeches, language use, and communicative competence at speeches level.