A Comparative Study Of Metaphor Of Modality In Chinese And English Versions Of Thunderstorm

The research on metaphor can be traced back to the ancient Greek philosophers about two thousand years ago. Since then, it has aroused the interest of numerous scholars who have made a great many studies from different perspectives. During the flourishing of metaphor research, Halliday made a significant contribution to the study of metaphor's nature and functions by putting forward grammatical metaphor, which is an indispensable part of systemic-functional grammar. The proposed theory of grammatical metaphor proved to be a brand new dimension of metaphor research.As a component of grammatical metaphor, metaphor of modality is worth deep and further research. Based on the universality of grammatical metaphor stated by Halliday, this thesis attempts to adopt Halliday's theory of metaphor of modality to the study of Chinese language, and then to make a comparison of both languages.In our study, all the examples are selected from the play Thunderstorm which is a classic from the famous playwright Cao Yu, and the translated version by Wang Tso-liang and Barrens. In the analysis, metaphor of modality is divided into subjective and objective orientations to demonstrate a clearer comparison. The study tends to show the universality of metaphor of modality, explore the similarities and differences in the use of metaphor of modality between English and Chinese, and examine the reasons related to those differences. Through our study, it is helpful for the language learners to grasp the target-language culture and facilitate the English language teaching and learning. In addition, it can enrich the pragmatic theories through the application of Halliday's theory of metaphor of modality to the interpretation of the literary text Thunderstorm.