A Systemic Functional Approach To Phonological Metaphor

Metaphor,as an old but fascinating topic,has been studied by scholars of different disciplines.However,the studies before Halliday have been mainly confined to the lexical layer of language.Halliday's argument that metaphorical variation is in most cases "lexicogrammatical rather than simply lexical" has turned a new leaf to the theories on metaphor.Both cases of lexical metaphor and grammatical metaphor are of the same metaphorical principle but different generality.The main distinction between them is one of delicacy on a continuum poled by grammar and lexis.With the development and elaboration of the theory of grammatical metaphor conducted by Halliday and other scholars all over the world,the framework of grammatical metaphor has extended from the original model(including ideational metaphor and interpersonal metaphor),to a more systematical frame consisting of both "metafunctions" and "stratifications".That is to say, grammatical metaphor can be classified in the light of stratification of language.Such kind of division was first conducted by Halliday(1978) in analyzing the social semiotic function of "antilanguages" in Bengali.Variation of antilanguage occurs at every level of language.Thus metaphor can occur at the phonological level.However,few further studies have been conducted on phonological metaphor until Veltman(2003).He argues that phonological features and units can function at other meaning-related levels,such as lexis,grammar and meaning.Therefore,phonological metaphor occurs when the speaker chooses some deviant prosodic or phonemic features to express some kind of metaphorical meanings.Such kind of deviant expression of meaning is called phonological metaphor. However,Veltman did not incorporate the study of phonological metaphor into the whole system of systemic functional grammar,and to date,phonological metaphor has not received much attention from other scholars.The current study embarks on such background and strives to justify and define the notion of phonological metaphor,explore its position in grammatical metaphor theory and the realization of it as features beside the clause and discuss the cognitive basis.Language is a resource to make meaning,and grammatical metaphor can be regarded as a strategy to encode meaning.Therefore,a comprehensive analysis of how language works in creating meanings at different levels of language is the key to understand the nature of language.Speech is a purposeful systematically organized human activity to convey meaning.In the three-stratum system of language,meaning can be represented by both lexicogrammar and sound systems.As has been proved by many scholars,the meaning variation represented by lexicogrammatical changes are metaphor,and meaning differences represented by sound system may also bring about metaphorical phenomenon, i.e.,metaphor at the phonological level or phonological metaphor.This thesis tentatively probes into phonological metaphor based on systemic functional grammar.Firstly,the notion of phonological metaphor is defined as variation of phonological representations of wording and meaning,and it constitutes one part of grammatical metaphor in systemic functional grammar as features beside the clause. Secondly,the thesis seeks to justify the notion of phonological metaphor in the light of "natural" grammar,stratification of written and spoken language and the theory of grammatical metaphor.The notion of grammar is revisited to encompass both lexicogrammar and phonology.Thus,phonological metaphor is an important part of grammatical metaphor in a broad sense.A more comprehensive framework of grammatical metaphor is tentatively proposed with reference to the metafunctions of language.Thirdly,the thesis explores the realization of phonological metaphor from the two parts of prosody:intonation and rhythm,with the former further divided into tonality, tonicity and tone.It is concluded on the basis of different kinds of realization that phonological metaphor mainly performs interpersonal and textual functions in spoken discourse.A case study of the "Silver" text is conducted to show how phonological metaphor performs such functions in actual utterances.Finally,the thesis tries to explore the cognitive basis of phonological metaphor as a kind of omnipresent way of expressing meanings.As a feature of dynamic discourse,phonological metaphor is claimed to obtain its metaphorical effects from the iconicity principle,including iconic proximity,iconic sequence,iconic quantity,articulatory iconicity and associative iconicity.Researches in the light of the prototype theory show a certain degree of similarity between the prototype and the congruent variants,because they are experiential,conventional and dynamic.The neutral choices of tonality,tonicity and tone also bear the characteristics of prototypicality. The foregrounding theory can account for how phonological variants get metaphorical effects in communication and convey implied meaning.