On Cognition And Function Of Grammatical Metaphor

The earliest interpretation of the long history of metaphor can be dated back to the time of Aristotle in ancient Greece. Halliday put forward the concept of grammatical metaphor and made a detailed and systematic illustration of it from the perspective of functional grammar, which has enriched the theory of functional grammar, extended the research scope of metaphor, providing a new perspective for metaphor research and making another path for discourse analysis. However, Halliday's study of language and its function from the social perspective gains little acceptance from researchers out of functional linguistics, especially the explanation of"congruence"and the classification of grammatical metaphor. It has been two decades since the proposal of the grammatical metaphor theory. Over this period, the theory has undergone much development and won more recognition. Grammatical metaphor has developed from a pure listing of grammatical metaphor phenomenon to the exploration of its formation mechanism, philosophical basis and relationship between grammatical metaphor and lexical metaphor. Moreover, grammatical metaphor has been used to analyze text and guide technological and news writing. Yet some people are still holding doubts about this theory. So I think it is necessary to make a systematic and comprehensive study of grammatical metaphor, to review the development of the theory itself and to prove the rationality of the theory. Combining the classical works on grammatical metaphor with the new development of cognitive linguistics and the latest achievements, this dissertation expounds the plausibility and operation mechanism of interpreting grammatical metaphor from the cognitive perspective, with the help of theoretical deduction, literature analysis, comparative analysis and example analysis, thus, exploring the generative motivation and mechanism of interpretation on the basis of cognitive linguistics as well as the functions of grammatical metaphor on the basis of systemic functional grammar. After a brief review of the study of metaphor and grammatical metaphor, the thesis centers on the definition of grammatical metaphor, its ontology in theory and reality, the different forms of grammatical metaphors and their functions, as well as its complementarities with lexical metaphor. This dissertation first investigates the measurement to distinguish congruent expression from metaphorical one according to Taylor's and Lakoff's linguistic category theory. Congruent form and incongruent form coexists, so there must be inner relationship between them and a cognitive mechanism which motivates the transference from congruent form to incongruent form. The author holds a view that congruent form acts as the cognitive reference point of incongruent form—that is prototype. Although they convey the same meaning with different forms, the former is a closer reflection of the reality of the world which is familiar to the listener or speaker, whereas the latter is a little abstract expression compared with congruent form, by means of category extension. Therefore, their relationship is a kind of category extension from prototype to periphery. The author also maintains that the space of grammatical metaphor is elastic but not fixed in that the degree of grammatical metaphor ranges based on the prototype or the cognitive reference point. The prototype extends to peripheral or even continues to its marginal. The farther it is from prototype, the more intense the metaphorical effect is. Prototype theory can be a new angle and theoretical basis for interpreting the nature of "congruent". Prototype Theory in cognitive linguistics holds that categories of the material world are formed around the prototypes in the process of categorization. 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 cognitive process constructed by prototypes.According to Cognitive Grammar, language is metaphorical and symbolic in nature. Lexicon can not be separated from grammar. They form a continuum of symbolic elements. Grammar is closely related with human cognition. Like lexicon, grammar also represents the structure and symbolizes conceptual content. The symbolic system of grammar helps us to make use of different ways to construct different imageries in order to explain the conceptual content. Different grammatical expressions can construe the same phenomenon in relation to these different imageries so that different conceptual content is formed. Grammatical class is an important concept in grammar and a cognitive process according to prototype, thus imagic in nature. Halliday's ideational metaphor and his reclassification of grammatical metaphor are in nature all about the transformations of grammatical classes, such as normalization, verbalization, adjectivization. So "congruent" is the prototype of a grammatical class or the prototypical usage of that grammatical class. And grammatical metaphor is "marked morphosyntactic variation" in nature. It is the reconstruction of experience and meaning and cognitive reference points to understand grammatical metaphor. At the same time, the author maintains that the ideology people have about the imagery or attributes of physical world comes from their experience. This assumption provides a cognitive ground for prototype theory. With the development of human being's cognition, the structure and symbolization of conceptual content diversified accordingly because of the great influence of prominent view and attentional view. The variations at the lexical grammatical level are grammatical metaphor.To sum up, we think both grammatical and lexical symbols are meaningful. When original grammatical meaning of grammatical symbols are inadequate in expressing new concepts or category, it is grammatical metaphor that increasingly expand its grammatical meaning in order to make language adapted to the constantly developing human cognition. The relations between grammatical metaphor and discourse types are also explored, with a conclusion that grammatical metaphor is usually related with scientific and formal writings as grammatical metaphor render a sense of objectivity and authority. Moreover, the specific functions of grammatical metaphor in formal discourses are explored. The explication of the ideational function and the tentative discussion of the interpersonal and textual functions of grammatical metaphor in scientific discourse contribute to the conclusion that grammatical metaphor constitutes the mechanism for the increase of technicality and rationality. We arrive at the conclusion that grammatical metaphor theory has a close relationship with human being's cognition. Grammatical metaphor is not only the different representation modes of meaning but also different construal of experiences. Qian Guanlian(1996:74) says: "any one of theoretical systems that explores the functions of language, no matter how complete and perfect it seems, actually, is far from perfect. So it needs to be made up by another different system." This study of cognitive and functional view on grammatical metaphor has both practical and theoretical significance for future study. Practically, it can deepen our understanding of grammatical metaphor and has a guiding function for English language teaching, especially reading and writing; theoretically, it can make up for the inadequacies of one particular theory so as to have a better cognition of various language phenomena. Although severely criticized due to lack of attention paid to cognitive domain, systemic functional grammar has been resonating with cognitive linguistics particularly with regard to construal mechanism for both acknowledging the flexibility and creativity of human experience construal and paying attention to the relationship among language, thinking and reality.