The Interpretation Of Grammatical Metaphor From A Cognitive Perspective

The study on metaphor has a long history and the earliest interpretation of metaphor can be dated back to the time of Aristotle in ancient Greece. And there are many other approaches and interpretations of metaphor from various perspectives. Among these interpretations, the cognitive view is the most powerful in interpreting metaphors.Most of the previous studies on metaphor have been confined to the metaphorical expressions at the lexical level, while the metaphorical expressions at the grammatical level have seldom been discussed, though some researchers have realized the existence of grammatical metaphor and have studied it under the title of iconicity and grammaticalization.Halliday is the first person who proclaimed the term of "grammatical metaphor". His research of grammatical metaphor is considered as the real beginning of grammatical metaphor study. His study is systemic and enriches metaphorical theories. However, there are still some unsatisfying points in Halliday's grammatical theory, especially his unclear and inefficient interpretation of the important concept "congruent", which is of great importance to the understanding of grammatical metaphor. Some other researchers try to interpret the concept but not very successfully. In essence Halliday's and others' interpretations of the concept "congruent" lack a powerful theoretical basis.Cognitive linguistics provides us with a new perspective on the grammatical study. According to Cognitive Grammar, language is metaphorical and symbolic in nature. Lexicon and grammar are inseparable, and they form a continuum of symbolic elements. Grammar is closely related with human cognition. Like lexicon, grammar also represents the structure and symbolization of conceptual content, and thus "magic" in character. The symbolic system of grammar provides the conceptual content with various ways of constructing different imageries. Different grammatical expressions can construe the same phenomenon based on these different imageries. When we use a particular construction or grammatical morpheme, we thereby select a particular image to structure the conceived situation for communicative purposes.Prototype Theory in cognitive linguistics holds that categories of the physical world are formed around the prototypes in the process of categorization. Prototype has two senses of meaning. It can either be understood as the good and representative member of that category or as mental representation and some sort of cognitive reference point, which instantiates the prototype of that category. The categorization of language itself is also developed by prototypes, so grammatical classes (traditionally, part of speech) are no exception. Halliday's ideational metaphor and his reclassification of grammatical metaphor are in nature about the transformations of grammatical classes, especially the commonly happening phenomenon of normalization, verbalization, adjectivization.The imagery nature of grammar provides a theoretical ground for the transformations of grammatical classes, representatively, nominalization,...