The Interpretation Of Canterville Ghost From The Perspective Of Grammatical Metaphor

The grammatical metaphor,first introduced by Halliday in 1985 into Systemic Functional Linguistics,is the substitution of one grammatical class or structure for another rather than that of one word for another.These two forms represent two expression variants of one given meaning: metaphorical form and congruent form.As a complementary type of metaphor with the traditional lexical one,its recognition is the result of the shift in perspective on metaphor form “below” to “above”.Halliday categorizes GM into ideational metaphor and interpersonal metaphor.Martin put forward textual metaphor in 1992 which perfected the GM.Since its appearance,it has received extensive attention from the linguistic field which has been applied in the scientific,political and news discourse analysis thus yielded a great number of fruits.However,the researches of its application in novel are relatively inadequate.Moreover,the updating of GM causes the failure of adoption of its latest research achievements in the previous analyses.The Canterville Ghost is a short story written by Oscar Wilde.The story is centered on a castle and delineates the struggle between an American family and a British ghost,Sir Simon.Oscar Wilde in the novel criticizes the increasingly commercialized American society,at the same time conveys his aesthetic view.The studies of this novel at home and abroad are relatively insufficient and the existing studies are mostly based on the perspective of literary criticism,and rarely seen from the linguistic perspective.On the basis of above statements,this paper makes an attempt to interpret how Oscar Wilde uses the GM to achieve theme construction and reveal the characteristics of main figures in Canterville Ghost.This paper consists of four chapters.Chapter One provides an overview of the domestic and foreign studies on Canterville Ghost.Chapter Two sets out to present the theoretical framework of this study including the definition,classification of GM and its relationship with literary analysis.Chapter Three investigates how Wilde skillfully manipulates GM to construct theme,the contradiction and reconciliation between England and America.Chapter Four comes to explore how Wilde skillfully employs GM to reveal the characteristics of Sir Simon and American family.The major findings are specifically presented as follows:Firstly,metaphors of mood are employed by Lord Canterville to highlight his view that the ghost exists,while metaphor of modality by Mr.Otis to give prominence to his view that the ghost does not exist;at the same time,the employment of ideational metaphor of sequence realized by expansion and ideational metaphor of figure highlights the positive and emotional responses of British people represented by Lady Barbara towards the supernatural phenomena;the employment of many metaphors of modality underscores the negative and pragmatic responses of American family towards the supernatural phenomena.These quite different views and responses reveal the cultural differences between England and America.Secondly,the adoption of projecting metaphors of mood accentuates Mr.Otis’ acceptance of the title of nobility.Besides,the manipulation of nominalizations and metaphors of mood reflects Sir Simon’s compromise of his aesthetic view.What’s more,the manipulation of metaphorical material and relational clauses reveals the Virginia’s kindness towards Sir Simon.These three points demonstrate the cultural reconciliation between England and America.Thirdly,the employment of ideational metaphor of element and metaphor of mood underlines that Sir Simon is an aesthete.The employment of the ideational metaphors of sequence realized by expansion emphasizes the material clauses without targets thus the impulsiveness of Sir Simon is shaped.The utilization of textual metaphor and ideational metaphors of sequence realized by projection shapes the miserableness of Sir Simon.Fourthly,the employment of ideational metaphors of sequence and figure and the subjective form of metaphor of modality reveals the rationalism and superiority of the American family.Metaphorical material and relational clauses demonstrate their vulgarity.In conclusion,the exploration of GM in the literary work of Canterville ghost helps us realize Wilde’s achievements in the choice of Language.Besides,it not only provides the readers with a new perspective to appreciate the novel,but also proves the practicability and operability of GM.