A Functional Analysis Of Interpersonal Grammatical Metaphors In American Tv Series House Of Cards

As one of the most importantmeans of construing the world,metaphor is rather a common linguistic phenomenon.There has been a long history since metaphor studies aroused a rising tide of interest.The earliest studies on metaphor can trace its history to the ancient Greece,when metaphor is regarded as a representative demonstration of the classical viewpoints by Aristotle.However,the focus of most of the previous metaphor studies lies in the metaphorical expressions which are within the lexical level,or rather lexical metaphor,overlooking the grammatical level of metaphors,later known as grammatical metaphor.When it comes to metaphor,people conventionally prefer lexical sense to grammatical one.Halliday's research of GM can be treated as the beginning of conscious study of GM among the present study.The idea of GM is firstly put forward by Halliday in 1985,by means of an analogy of the rhetorical transference between lexis and grammar,which shows that the selection at lexical facet is only one realm of lexico-grammatical selection,namely ‘wording'.The significance of theories consists in practice guidance.So is the condition with Systemic Functional Grammar.SFG aims to deal with discourse analysis.Interpersonal GM,as a subcomponent of SFG,plays a vital role in realizing interpersonal meaning.In the past decades,different scholars have conducted a great deal of researches on interpersonal GMs,most of whichconcentrate on the exploration of classification as well as representation.Until recent years,some scholars are engaged in the analysis of the functions of interpersonal GMs in such variousdiscourse genres that political address,reports,news,and poetries and the like.This thesis attempts to make an assay of the functions of interpersonal GMs appearing in the American TV series House of Cards.By applying Halliday's SFG,the studymakes an attempt to analyze the related conversations,on the basis of which the research aims to deal with three specific objectives: firstly,the author tries to find out what interpersonal GMs exist in the TV series;secondly,the writer tries to figure out different functions of interpersonal GMs in verbal exchange;thirdly,the analysis goes further to exploresomething hidden behind what speakers said,especially those people take for granted,in other words,the relationship between interpersonal GMs and American ideology.Both qualitative and quantitative methods are employed to analyze the interpersonal GMs in House of Cards.To begin with,in the counting process,both metaphors of mood and metaphors of modality are counted by quantitative method,which is followed by two figures,noting the occurrence and frequency of the two forms of metaphors.Thus,it is not difficult to prove that the interpersonal GMs do exist in theTV series.Then the qualitative method was adopted in the process of interpretation,more specifically,in the process of interpreting the functions of interpersonal GMs.After careful analysis,the research blanks got filled.We can reach a conclusion that both metaphors of mood and metaphors of modality are widely employed in the conversations of House of Cards,contributing a lot to expressspeakers' viewpoints and attitudes,that interlocutors in the TV series achieve their communicative aims and intentions much better by the employment of interpersonal GMs.What's more,the existence is closely related to the context of the situation and culture.Theoretically,this thesis further proves that SFG provides discourse analysis with a multi-level and multi-functional theoretical framework,with the interpersonal GMs playing a significant role in analyzing a specific discourse genre—House of Cards.Practically,according to the study,we are equipped with the insights of the functions of metaphors of mood and metaphors of modality in House of Cards;thus,we have a different angle on comprehending the TV series,in terms of the interlocutors' attitudes,viewpoints and personalities.Therefore,we become to better understand how interpersonal GMs function in the TV series.When it comes to second language acquisition and language teaching,it is beneficial for Chinese learners in English reading,writing,and their acknowledgement of the correlation between language form and function as well.