The Evaluative Functions Of Grammatical Metaphor

The study of metaphor as a crucial means for the construal of human experience dates back to ancient Greece, when Aristotle defines metaphor within the configuration of words. Ever since then different schools of theories appear to tap this topic from such angles as rhetoric, cognition and linguistics. In the late twentieth century, the development of modern linguistics witnessed the growing interest of researchers on this topic at home and abroad. Linguists have done extensive researches on metaphor from various perspectives, such as Langacker and Lakoff s study of cognitive linguistics, Givon's study of iconicity, Heine's study of grammaticalization, etc.It is fair to say that the real beginning of the study of grammatical metaphor is marked by M.A.K Halliday's systemic functional grammar. Halliday not only puts forward the term grammatical metaphor but also investigates it in detail (Halliday 1985, 1994; Halliday and Matthiessen 1999, 2004), which opens up a whole new realm of study on metaphor and marks the beginning of the theoretical research in this specific field.Halliday (1994: 42) points out that there are always two possible levels of achievement to aim at in text/discourse analysis. One is a contribution to the understanding of the text and the other is a contribution to the evaluation of the text. The evaluation of the text has stimulated intense interest of many researchers from various...