Grammatical Metaphor In Law Reports From The Perspective Of Systemic-functional Grammatical Theory

Law reports play a significant role and offer a prominent reference to legalsystem in common law countries. Law reports are mainly performative andinformative, as to its technical nature, it is also prescriptive. Because legal documentsare written in fixed formats and in exact wordings, they are lengthy and boring.The author of the present endeavor aims to analyze the grammatical metaphor inlaw reports based on Halliday’s systemic functional theory, and to probe into thefunctions of grammatical metaphor in law reports. After some descriptions ofmetaphor and grammatical metaphor, this thesis studies systemic-functional grammarand law reports, and expounds the nature of legal language, especially the lexical,syntactic and grammatical characters to remove people’s misconception about legallanguage. Meanwhile, the author of the thesis attempts to unveil the threemetafunctions of grammatical metaphor in law reports, to probe into ideationalmetaphor, interpersonal metaphor and textual metaphor with detailed examples. Fromthese examples, the author proves that grammatical metaphor is one effective andfrequently adopted device in law reports. Furthermore, the author of the thesis putsforward that, grammatical metaphor in law reports functions as the tool forconciseness ideationally; as the tool for objectiveness, authoritativeness, and formalityinterpersonally; and as the tool for cohesion textually.It is hoped that this research will contribute to future study in this area. Becauselittle work has been done about grammatical metaphor in law reports, the authorsincerely hopes that this thesis will serve as a spur in this area.