Grammatical Metaphor In The Language Of The Law: A Hallidayan Approach

Jurisprudential linguistics is a newly emerged marginal study with high applicability based on the junction of the study of law and language. Western legalists firmly believed that the language of the law should strictly comply with the routine and be that of"literal"language, presenting the real world and opinions without subjective and ideational wordings. However, along with the commerce of the new era, such a comprehension is challenged by the constructivist schools of linguists. On the other hand, Hallidayan functional linguistics has undergone the trial of time and its most outstanding application is in discourse analysis. Based on the previous studies of the legal discourse and the functional linguistics, this thesis attempts to analyze legal texts in view of metaphoricity in Hallidayan approach.Take the Halliday's 1996 reclassification of grammatical metaphor as the general frame to analyze legal discourse, this thesis carry forward a comparison study on nominalization, verbalization and adjectivalization with focus on the application and functions of nominalization. The result of the research indicates that the grammatical metaphor is pervasive and discursive in legal texts.