| This thesis tries to use grammatical metaphor theory in Systemic Functional Linguistics to study the grammatical metaphors in China Column of The Economist. The opening of China Column of The Economist is of great significance. Many scholars have studied China Column from different perspectives, but most of the studies focus on stylistics and translation. Consequently this thesis makes research on China Column from the perspective of grammatical metaphor to make people have a deeper understanding of it.This thesis randomly chooses 25 news reports as samples from 138 news reports in China Column of The Economist of 2013 and studies them, based on Halliday and Martin’s grammatical metaphor theory with quantitative and qualitative methods, to illustrate the distribution features, the main realization forms and the functions of grammatical metaphors in China Column of The Economist.It is found in the study that ideational metaphor accounts for 50.2% in grammatical metaphors in the 25 news reports in China Column of The Economist of 2013. Its functions are causing downgrading, compressing information and reconstructing experience. In the process of simplifying sentence structure and compressing information, the language of news reports becomes more concise and vivid. Though interpersonal metaphor only accounts for 5.5% in grammatical metaphors, it helps the news writers to express subjective ideas, arouse readers’ interest and promote the communicate with readers. Interpersonal metaphor makes news reports objective and shortens the distance with readers. Textual metaphor has salient function and cohesive function. It can attract readers and makes news reports flow more smoothly.Ideational metaphor, interpersonal metaphor and textual metaphor work together to make news reports in China Column objective, concise and vivid. This thesis will benefit for people’s deeper understanding of the functions of grammatical metaphor in news discourse and guide the writing of news reports. |
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