A Study Of The Stylistic Functions Of Grammatical Metaphor In Business English Contracts And Business English Letters From A Systemic Functional Perspective

On the level of context,business English contract communication and business English letter communication are the two frequently seen subgenres of international business,and also the two key parts of international business communication,with the former as a guarantee of the order and the latter through the whole process.On the level of text,compared with general English,business English contracts and business English letters are both highly grammatical metaphorized professional texts,but between these two types of subgenre-texts there are also some minor stylistic differences.The similarities and differences of the styles of these two sub-genre texts may be correlated with the use of grammatical metaphor.Recently,some scholars in China and abroad have noticed the phenomenon of grammatical metaphor in these two subgenre-texts,but have not studied it systematically.There exist some limitations in previous studies:the content studied was confined to its influences on the forms of lexico-syntactic structures rather than its functions in constructing the semantic characteristics of these two subgenre-texts;the types of grammatical metaphor observed were limited to only two which were nominalization and modal metaphor,not involving other types of grammatical metaphor such as adjectivization,prepositionalization,mood metaphor and so on;the research method employed was very simple,which led to the unconvincingness of some research results.According to Functional Linguistics,the major change of the communicative purpose(s)usually gives us a different genre,and minor changes of the communicative purpose(s)within one genre are likely to result in the appearance of different sub-genres.On the level of text,different genre-texts and even different subgenre-texts show differences in genre constraining factors such as the lexico-grammatical resources,stylistic semantic features,positioning of rhetorical elements,certain kinds of expressions and so son.These differences make up different styles.The“deflective”use of grammatical metaphor which is an essential lexico-grammatical resource in reconstruing experiential phenomenon in these two subgenre-texts will impose a series of influences on their genre structures,stylistic semantic features,lexico-syntactic structures and so on.Based on the above research background,this study selects both business English contracts and business English letters which are the two frequently seen subgenre-texts of international business,and intends to discuss the stylistic functions of grammatical metaphor in these two subgenre-texts.This study aims to answer the following three questions:(1)What is the distribution of grammatical metaphor in business English contracts and business English letters respectively?Compared with general English text(reference text)and even business English letters within the same genre,which types of grammatical metaphor are prominent(‘deflective')in business English contracts?Compared with general English text(reference text)and even business English contracts within the same genre,which types of grammatical metaphor are prominent(‘deflective')in business English letters?(2)What stylistic functions do those prominent types of grammatical metaphor have in business English contracts?(3)What stylistic functions do those prominent types of grammatical metaphor have in business English letters?To answer the above questions,this study,taking Functinal perspective and setting its basis on the theoretical assumptions about meaning construing,language hierarchy,instantiation and context,designs its stylistic analysis approach(the stylistic analysis approach of business English contracts/letters with reference to both system and text).Following the two major steps of description and interpretation/evaluation proposed in this approach,this study first employs the corpus study method and comparative analysis method to quantitatively compare and describe the distributions of grammatical metaphor in these three self-built corpora(business English contract corpus,business English letter corpus and general English corpus).Next,this study uses the corpus study method,comparative analysis method and instantiation analysis method all together to interpret and evaluate the stylistic functions that those prominent types of grammatical metaphor have in business English contracts and business English letters.The findings are as follows:(1)In the word list of business English contracts,nominalization enjoys the highest frequency with adjectivization,prepositionalization,verbalization and modal metaphor ranking the 3^rd,13^th,34^th and 52^nd.However,mood metaphor is only used once in this corpus(in the ending part of an employment contract).Compared with general English text and even business English letters within the same genre,the prominent types of grammatical metaphor in business English contracts are the three types of ideational metaphor(nominalization,adjectivization and prepositionalization)and the two types of interpersonal metaphor(modal and mood metaphor).These three types of ideational metaphor in business English contracts show obvious“overuse”feature,while these two types of interpersonal metaphor present apparent“underuse”feature.In the word list of business English letters,nominalization enjoys the highest frequency with adjectivization,modal metaphor and mood metaphor ranking the 4^th,5^th and 15^th.However,prepositionalization and verbalization only rank the 60^th and64^th respectively.Compared with general English text and even business English contracts within the same genre,the prominent types of grammatical metaphor in business English letters are only modal metaphor and mood metaphor which are the two main types of interpersonal metaphor.(2)Those prominent types of grammatical metaphor in business English contracts have functions in constructing some of the semantic and formal characteristics of the style of business English contracts.On the level of stylistic semantics,to begin with,they can construct the correlation between this style and its context,that is,construct the communicative purpose of business English contracts,the equal status and“writer-reader”double indentity of business parties and the formal mode of business English contract communication.Besides,they can construct the grammatical metaphorized theme of business English contracts.Some ideational metaphorized keywords construct the grammatical metaphorized theme through frequently repeating those grammatical metaphorized entities,and other ideational metaphorized keywords make the grammatical metaphorized theme salient by means of showing very high keyness.Furthermore,they can construct the grammatical metaphorized titles and grammatical metaphorized information of the moves of business English contracts,especially those of the three basic moves which are“termination”,“force majeure”and“arbitration”.At last,they can also construct the stylistic semantic features of business English contracts like objectivity,abstractness,formality,seriousness,preciseness and so on.On the level of stylistic forms,they can make the grammatical metaphorized formal characteristics of business English contracts salient.Firstly,the frequent use of nominalized terms and the front positioning of prepositionalized structures can make the grammatical metaphorized information of business English contracts salient.Secondly,they can make the type/token ratio(lexical density)of business English contracts very low,that is,make the range of lexis very restricted but the technicality very high.Thirdly,they can make the words and sentences of business English contracts very long.Fourthly,they can make the grammatical metaphorized word groups and grammatical metaphorized syntactic structures of business English contracts salient.(3)Those prominent types of interpersonal metaphor in business English letters have functions in constructing some of the semantic and formal characteristics of the style of business English letters.On the level of stylistic semantics,to begin with,they can construct the correlation between this style and its context,that is,achieve the communicative purpose of win-win cooperation,construct the business partnership of equality and mutual respect and construct the formal mode of business English letter communication.Besides,they can construct the grammatical metaphorized theme of business English letters,which is mainly shown in the fact that those interpersonal metaphorized keywords can make the grammatical metaphorized theme salient by means of presenting very high keyness.Furthermore,they can construct the grammatical metaphorized information of the moves of business English letters,especially that of the three basic moves which are“establishing credentials/purposes”,“soliciting response”and“ending politely”.At last,they can also construct the stylistic semantic features of business English letters such as subjectivity,modesty,implicitness,politeness and so on.On the level of stylistic forms,they can make the grammatical metaphorized formal characteristics of business English letters salient.Business English letters are filled with various types of modal metaphor(especially the explicit-subjective oriented modal metaphor)and mood metaphor(five types of mood metaphor are involved).The frequent use of them can make the grammatical metaphorized word groups and syntactic structures of business English letters salient.It is concluded that:Firstly,not only are the stylistic functions of grammatical metaphor in business English contracts and business English letters realized as a stylistic form to differentiate these two types of sub-genre texts from‘everyday'general texts or even between themselves,but are more importantly realized as a process of constructing these two styles.On the level of stylistic semantics,the prominent types of grammatical metaphor in these two types of subgenre-texts can construct the correlation between the style and its context,the grammatical metaphorized theme,the grammatical metaphorized move and those stylistic semantic features;on the level of stylistic forms,they have the function of making those grammatical metaphorized formal characteristics salient.Secondly,the stylistic functions of grammatical metaphor in business English contracts and business English letters are the result of the writer's choice of language system resources(ideational system and interpersonal system)in the context of international business communication,that is,the instantiation of the ideational system and interpersonal system of language respectively in these two types of subgenre-texts.This study has both theoretical and practical values.In the field of theory,firstly,this study has revealed the rule of language use that grammatical metaphor has functions in constructing the styles of these two sub-genre texts of international business communications,that is,business English contracts and business English letters,which can accelerate the theoretical research work of business English linguistics in China.Secondly,within the research area of grammatical metaphor in Systemic Functional Linguistics,this study has verified and expanded Halliday's assertion(2004/2007)that“we can use nominalization to distinguish expert language from everyday language”,and has broken the limit of previous researches on grammatical metaphor which only regarded it as a stylistic formal characteristic and ignored its constructing functions of the styles.In the field of practice,the findings during the review work of this study about business English and grammatical metaphor studies in China and abroad can give related scholars some inspirations,the systemic functional model of stylistic analysis created by this study may serve as an applicable and operational approach of stylistic analysis and so on.