Halliday's Theory Of Grammatical Metaphor And Semogenesis

The term "grammatical metaphor," developed by M. A. K. Halliday, the founder of the Systemic Functional linguistics (SFL), sounds quite unusual in that it breaks people's general assumption that metaphors are located in lexical expressions. Halliday's such a unique approach to metaphor, namely grammatical approach, did not get immediate responses in the academic field; rather, it was coldly received and even marginalized although it was advanced in the context of global metaphormania in the1970s and1980s.The theory of grammatical metaphor (GM) began to get developed in the Australian "Write it Right" Project, which was to help secondary school students with their learning problems in science subjects. For this educational project, Halliday and his colleagues analyzed a considerable amount of scientific texts in terms of grammatical features, and thus began a new research agenda for GM. From that on, Halliday has studied diachronically how GM played an important role in human experience construal and knowledge construction.The present thesis intends to trace the latest development of Halliday's theory of GM in these four aspects:the founding of the theory; the transition period; the breakthrough in the theory; the upgrading and perfection of the theoretical framework. Halliday's evolutionary view of meaning is integrated to explore the theoretical motivation and the profoundness of the GM theory, with the hope to achieve a better understanding the recent development of the GM theory and its important place in the SFL theoretical framework.Firstly, in the description of the founding of the GM theory, several key topics are discussed in details. They are the perspective "from the above," congruence, the initial classification of GM, language modes and GM. These constitute the main content of the early theory of GM and they also act as a link between the past and the future of the GM theory. Besides, the present thesis also touches upon other points included but underdeveloped in the initial presentation of the GM metaphor, like demetaphorization and the cognitive nature of metaphor because these under-elaborated points contain the future research topics for the GM study. The latest development of the GM theory is depicted in this present thesis from two perspectives:one is Halliday's evolutionary view of meaning as a breakthrough facilitating the study of GM; the other is the upgrading and perfection of the theoretical system of GM and the significant notions mobilized by the study of GM.Halliday's evolutionary view of meaning reflects his special view about language change, and the specialness lies in its unique perspective to approach language change and the three time dimensions in which language change has been happening. What Halliday cares is not the change in language forms, but the evolution of function-semantic, that is, how the meaning potential of language system gets extended. Halliday identifies three semohistories:phylogenesis, ontogenesis and logogenesis. In spite of this, however, Halliday' evolutionary view of meaning has never been a title or a chapter in any of his books or articles; instead, his view pervades in many of his articles written in the1990s. This presents a challenge for our present study that we must concentrate his scattered and unsystematic ideas from various articles and books in order to build a faithful system of his evolutionary view of meaning, which can be considered as something original achieved by this present study. We have portrayed Halliday's evolutionary view of meaning from the following constituents:the evolution of grammar and its relation to the evolution of consciousness, the three semohistories and their relationship, the synthetic attribution of semogenesis. Besides, we explained the way Halliday is influenced by Darwinism and pointed out that the term "evolutionary" used by Halliday does not convey any sense of evaluation. The evolution of grammar, as a core constituent in Halliday's evolutionary view of meaning, also contains his idea on human categorization. He has, from the perspective of human experience construal, identified that there are three key steps in the semogenesis:generalization, abstractness, and metaphor; and revealed that there exists certain correspondence among the ontogenesis, the construction of human knowledge, the features of language modes, and thus, that the three semohistories share something in common. The contribution made by Halliday's evolutionary view of meaning is that semogenesis can prove the real existence of GM in the three semohistories.With the reference of Halliday's evolutionary view of meaning, the theoretical framework of GM has got upgraded, with the re-definition of GM, the explanation of how GM has evolved, and how it functions. GM is re-defined as a major strategy in extending the meaning potential of language system, and this new definition reveals the close connection between GM theory and semogenesis. Halliday thinks that there are two kinds of conditions for the evolution of GM:the theoretical condition (stratified language) and the proper historical reality(the human settlement culture, the development of writing, and the Western scientific civilization). The function mechanism of GM includes textual motivation, semantic junction and syndromes of GM. These explanations will all contribute to a better understanding of the nature and functions of GM, and replay how the functions fulfilled by language shape the language system. And the new classifications of GM show that Halliday no longer distinguishes ideational GM from interpersonal or textual GM.The development of GM theory has mobilized some related concepts and facilitated their theorization, and thus made contributions to the perfection of the SFL theoretical framework. This thesis includes the discussion of these concepts:stratification, realization and congruence. These three all have reference to each other and together form the theoretical foundation of GM. We have traced the theoretical origins of Halliday's stratification and found that his notion of realization is borrowed from Hjelmslev's, that Firth's idea of function determines how Halliday borrows from Hjelmslev, and that Lemke's "metaredundancy" helps formalize the notion of "realization". The concept "comgruence" is discussed under three sub-headings:the early uses of the term tell us that there exists certain consensus among SFL scholars; the ineffability of linguistic categories presupposes the hard theorization of "congruence"; in spite of these, however, efforts and progress have been made in theorizing this concept in that congruent realization enjoys priority both in the construction of meaning system in SFL and in all the three semohistories.On the basis of sufficient discussion of the latest development of Halliday's GM theory and semogenesis, we come to consider the relationship between these two and their theoretical contributions. It is held that these two theories are independent and cannot be substituted by each other though they share something in common and have contributed to each other. Halliday uses GM theory to describe and explain a mode of meaning in modern standard language at the textual level, while his evolutionary view of meaning is his understanding of language nature and language change. These two together form a concerted effort to reveal the immense power of grammar and the power of human language. Therefore, these two theories facilitate and upgrade each other in an interwoven way.These two theories have both crystallized Halliday's several decades'linguistic study and have pushed SFL to a new stage of development. We have compared GM with lexical metaphor studied in cognitive linguistics and found that both, in spite of their differences, reveal the constructivism of meaning, the metaphorical nature of human knowledge, and the relativity of truth. As for their contribution to the field of language change, the evolutionary view of meaning displays an unusual scope and profoundness, and provides a different perspective and interpretation of language change.Finally, the thesis discusses the philosophical implications these two theories give us. Both reflect Halliday's view of meaning:the inseparability of language and thought; meaning emerges from the impact between human material experience and conscious experience; our reality is construed and constructed by language. No wonder that such a view of meaning forms a huge attack upon the traditional ontology and epistemology.