A Comparative Study On Grammatical Metaphor In English And Chinese Lyrics

Grammatical Metaphor (GM) is a very important means of understanding the world, which can turn events, activities, emotions, ideas, etc. into entities (Lakoff & Johnson, 1980). Halliday (1985) holds that GM does not refer to the substitution of one word for another, but the substitution of one grammatical class or construction for another. In this sense, GM is an objective phenomenon existing in language. Its main role is to convert one grammatical class or function into another by means of metaphor, thereby some new experience classifications will come into being. GM, as a hot issue in systemic-functional linguistics, has attracted more and more attention ever since it is first put forward by Halliday in 1985. In recent years, many scholars have applied GM to the analysis of various types of texts with convincing conclusions coming out in large numbers. So far, the studies on GM nearly cover all types of literary texts and a broad scope of specialized genres, such as forensic, journalistic, and technical discourse, while lyric poetry, although studied by quite a few scholars for different purposes, is seldom analyzed in terms of GM, especially in the contrastive study between English and Chinese.Lyric poetry is not only the essence of poetry, but also the essence of literature. In view of its great literary value, the contrastive study on lyric poetry will provide us with a new perspective of perceiving and appreciating literary works in the two languages, and further penetrating the differences and similarities between English and Chinese language and culture. Therefore, based on Halliday's theory of GM, applying qualitative and quantitative research methods, this thesis aims to carry out the comparative study on GM phenomena in English and Chinese lyrics, so as to find out the similarities and differences of its distribution.To achieve this goal, 32 English and Chinese lyrics are collected as the data of this study. The application of different types of GM, as well as its distribution in the chosen English and Chinese lyrics, is contrastively analyzed in details. Through analysis and discussion, four major finding can be generated: (1) As for ideational GM, Nominalization dominates in both English and Chinese lyrics. Adjectivization and the type of ideational GM irrelevant to rank-shifts are more frequently used in English lyrics, while Verbalization is more densely distributed in Chinese lyrics than that in English lyrics. (2) As for mood metaphor, context is an important criterion of identifying mood metaphors in both English and Chinese lyrics. However, mood metaphors in English lyrics are generally realized by hypotaxis, and identified by dexical makers, whereas in Chinese lyrics those are generally realized by parataxis and identified by modal words. (3) Modality metaphors are seldom used in both English and Chinese lyrics. Besides, the realization of modality metaphors in both English and Chinese corpus is by means of projecting clauses. (4) As for textual GM, marked theme is a major type of textual GM. Prepositional phases as themes are densely distributed in both English and Chinese lyrics. Both noun phrases (as object) as themes and time adverbials as themes are much more frequently used in Chinese lyrics than in English lyrics. Non-verbal phrases (as adverbial) as themes only occur in English Lyrics.This study has proved that there are both striking similarities and significant differences in types and distributions of GM in English and Chinese lyrics. The causes of such sameness and differences can be explored in terms of thought pattern, lyric image, language features of lyrics and the need for the cohesion. Although the contrastive study of GM is only confined to the type of lyric, which has its limitations, it can provide certain helpful enlightenment to the contrastive study between English and Chinese. Besides, since GM is recognized as an advanced stage of language use, this study may offer some inspirations for teachers in language teaching. Provided that teachers introduce the concept of GM into English poem teaching, students will not only be able to analyze and appreciate English poetry from a new point of view, but also can improve their creative ability of language and critical thinking skills, as well as the capacity for understanding western culture. Finally, it is sincerely hoped that this present study will attract more scholars to further research and exploration of precious values of GM.