A Study Of Grammatical Metaphor In English Business Letters

The concept of"Grammatical Metaphor"(GM) was first put forward by Halliday in his book An Introduction to Functional Grammar in 1985. In his opinion, besides the lexical metaphor, there is another kind of metaphor existing on the lexico-grammatical level, which can be termed"Grammatical Metaphor"(GM). According to Halliday, GM is a kind of"variation in the expression of a given meaning"(Halliday, 2000: 342), involving the transference between different grammatical domains and can be classified into two types: ideational metaphor and interpersonal metaphor.Inspired by Halliday's idea"metaphorical expressions are characteristic of all adult discourses"(Halliday, 2000: 342), many scholars, both at home and abroad, have applied GM theory to discourse analysis and produced some constructive results.In this thesis, GM theory is employed to analyze the discourse of conflictive business letters, which are used for delivering unpleasant news. It tries to find out the occurrences, linguistic realizations and functions of GM in conflictive business letters, through which GM's contribution to constructing the text, forming the language features and achieving the goal of business communication can be revealed. The findings of the analysis can be summarized as follows:Firstly, abundant GMs are found in conflictive business letters, including both ideational metaphors and interpersonal metaphors. Ideational metaphors are much more frequently used than interpersonal metaphors.Secondly, nominalization is the major form in conflictive business letters. It performs condensing function, ideological function and discursive function in conflictive business letters, which can make the letters more concise, objective, neutral, formal, courteous, considerate, and cohesive.Finally, metaphor of modality is the main type of interpersonal metaphors in conflictive business letters. It can help conflictive business letters to maintain polite and objective when expressing unpleasant news. Mood metaphors are not popular in conflictive business letters, and most of them are commands realized by declarative mood and interrogative mood, which are helpful to easing the mood and avoiding the conflict. In a word, interpersonal metaphors in conflictive business letters makes a great contribution to achieving the purpose of business communication and keeping the good business relations.In conclusion, GM is a common phenomenon in conflictive business letters. It can effectively promote the construction of the text, the formation of the language features and the achievement of the goal of business communication.The present study is just a tentative analysis of GM in conflictive business letters. The author hopes that it can shed light on the better understanding and writing of conflictive business letters in conducting international business or studying.