Accessibility Of Grammatical Metaphor: A Perspective Of Systemic Functional Linguistics

Grammatical metaphor is one of the key notions in systemeic functional linguistics. The notion was first proposed by Halliday (1985/1994), which is different from lexical metaphor in the traditional sense. The former looks at metaphor'from above', as variation in the meaning of a given expression, while the latter looks at metaphor'from below', as variation in the meaning of a given expression (Halliday 1985/1994, p.342). Halliday (1985/1994) and Halliday and Matthiessen (1999) classify only two types of grammatical metaphor:ideational metaphor (metaphor of transitivity or experiential metaphor and logical metaphor), and interpersonal metaphor (including metaphor of mood and modality), whereas textual metaphor is excluded from the picture. It is J.R. Martin who first proposed the notion of textual metaphor. He (1993) argues that grammatical metaphor can also be realized in thematic and information structure by way of metaphorical theme and metaphorical new. Though there is controversy over the existence of grammatical metaphor, the thesis will mainly follow the steps of Halliday, Matthiessen and Martin, affirming the existence of grammatical metaphor and classifying it into ideational grammatical metaphor, interpersonal grammatical metaphor and textual grammatical metaphor. So far, many researches have been done on grammatical metaphor. However, the study of the accessibility of grammatical metaphor is rare. Liu Chengyu (2008) makes an empirical study of the distribution of grammatical metaphors in introductory and academic English metalinguistic texts, which to some degree throws light on the influence of grammatical metaphor on the accessibility of a text. The thesis attempts to make a further study of the accessibility of grammatical metaphor. Accessibility, a notion put forward in psychology, refers to the relative ease or convenience for people to retrieve a linguistic or memory unit from the memory system in the brain. It is borrowed into the thesis to explore whether grammatical metaphors will facilitate people's understanding of the text or hinder their access to the text.In the present thesis, the analysis of the accessibility of grammatical metaphor will be carried out from the aspects of cognitive efforts, lexical density, and rank-shift, which are considered to have close relationships with the accessibility of metaphorical realizations. It is argued that ideational metaphors have lower degrees of accessibility than their congruent counterparts; interpersonal metaphors have higher accessibility; and textual metaphors usually have lower accessibility.The thesis consists of five chapters. The introduction starts with the background of grammatical metaphor studies and proposes the purpose and significance of the present study. Chapter Two makes a brief review of the study of grammatical metaphor and accessibility, which justifies the necessity and significance to study the accessibility of grammatical metaphor from the angle of systemic functional linguistics. Chapter Three provides the theoretical framework for the analysis of the accessibility of grammatical metaphor. Firstly it makes a brief distinguishment between grammatical realization and congruent realization and a brief classification of grammatical metaphor. Then it mainly discusses the inherent relationship between cognitive efforts and accessibility and their relationships with lexical density and rank-shift. It is proved that lexical density and rank-shift have great influence on the cognitive efforts needed for a hearer/reader to understand a metaphorical realization, thus the accessibility of grammatical metaphor. Chapter Four is the analysis of the accessibility of the three types of grammatical metaphors:ideational metaphor, interpersonal metaphor and textual metaphor from the aspects of cognitive efforts, lexical density and rank-shift. It is proved that ideational metaphors usually have lower degrees of accessibility than their congruent counterparts with higher lexical density and downgraded rank-shift; interpersonal metaphors usually have higher accessibility when transferred from their congruent counterparts because of their explicit realizations of mood and modality; and textual metaphors usually have lower accessibility because of their deviation from the expected congruent realizations which is considered to consume more come cognitive efforts for the hearers/readers to deal with.Chapter Five is the conclusion, stating the main findings of the thesis, its significance for the present study and the suggestions for the future study.