Grammatical Metaphor: A Semogenic Perspective

Metaphor has long been a heated topic in rhetorics and modern linguistics. When it came to the 1970s, with the rise of analytic philosophy, western philosophy showed a trend to the linguistic analysis, particularly, the analysis of metaphor. More and more philosophers, psychologists, semioticians, linguists, cognitive scientists, and even psychological analysts showed their interest in the study of metaphor; hence it has become a cross-disciplinary study. Halliday (1985) proposes the difference between lexical metaphor and grammatical metaphor, and firstly puts forward the linguistic notion grammatical metaphor in his monograph An Introduction to Functional Grammar. The concept of grammatical metaphor means that metaphor happens not only on the lexical level but also on the lexicogrammatical level. Halliday and Matthiessen (1999: 233) also think that lexical and grammatical metaphor are not two different phenomena; they are both aspects of the same general metaphorical strategy by which we expand our semantic resources for construing experience. Grammatical metaphor can be regarded as a tool of creating meaning. Therefore, we should be apprenticed into academic modes of writing and learn what accounts as being meaningful in our fields; what constitutes "writtenness" in texts, what ways of positioning ourselves are valued. So the learning and understanding of grammatical metaphor will be one of the resources we need to master.Many scholars have done much research on grammatical metaphor; however, the study on grammatical metaphor from the semogenic perspective is really rare. Therefore, it is essential to do further research on grammatical metaphor diachronically and synchronically.The notion of semogenesis is proposed in the joint work Construing Experience through Meaning: A Language-based Approach to Cognition by Halliday and Matthiessen (1999). Semogenic process includes at least three time frames, that is, the ontogenetic time frame, the logogenetic time frame and the phylogenetic time frame. Combining these three time frames, based on the previous precious study on grammatical metaphor, this paper tentatively offer a macroscopic frame to promote the concrete research methods to the perspectives of philosophy to investigate the nature of grammatical metaphor.Ontogenesis refers to the sequence of events involved in the development of an individual organism from its birth to its death. This developmental history often involves a move from simplicity to higher complexity. The process whereby language arose exists in our species and so does the ceaseless change of human language once it is present in the species. By this process, we can ascertain how human beings use language to communicate with each other successfully, the nature of diversities of language use, i.e. metaphorical language realization in the use of individual speakers' language. Logogenesis is a meaning-making process in the development of text in the textual space. The logogenetic process is the unfolding of the act of meaning itself, i.e. the instantial construction of meaning in the form of a text. By this process, we can make clear how a text is constructed by using grammatical metaphor. The phylogenetic process refers to the evolution of human language. Through the exploration of the evolution of language, we can see the metaphorical and demetaphorical process of language, i.e. the evolution of grammatical metaphor.This thesis consists of six chapters.The introduction starts with the background of grammatical metaphor studies and the tendency in modern metaphor theories. It proposes a new approach to metaphor analysis, i.e. from the viewpoint of semogenesis.Chapter Two gives a brief review to the history of metaphor study, particularly the study of grammatical metaphor, presents an introduction to semogenesis and sets out the theoretical foundations for the current study.Chapter Three approaches grammatical metaphor from the ontogenetic perspective. This section will be divided into three parts, that is, three developmental stages of children's language, the phase of protolanguage, transition and into the adult system, exploring what kinds of metaphors are used by children at various developmental stages in relation to the context in which they typically occur.Chapter Four is concerned with the logogenesis of one text "Testing genetic models of mate choice evolution in the wild" extracted from the Journal Trends in Ecology and Evolution (Vol.21, No.8 2006) published by Elsevier. We will focus on how a text is unfolded, coherently unified by utilizing grammatical metaphor in great details from logogenetic point of view in relation to the Theme-Rheme structure.Chapter Five is going to make a comparison between metaphors used in the register of formal written language of different ages by taking examples from Chapter One extracted from Darwin's (1859) The Origin of Species, "Domestic Pigeons, Their Differences and Origin" and the article analyzed in Chapter Four in this essay. The comparison is carried out from the following two aspects: (1) ideational metaphors, and (2) interpersonal metaphors. Based on the data analysis, the essay will tentatively sketch the outline of metaphorization.Chapter Six gives a conclusion, elucidating the nature of grammatical metaphor, its significance for the present study and the relationship of the three time frames.