Reconstruing Experience Through Language

This dissertation attempts to explore the features of ideational metaphor in modern historical discourse under the framework of Systemic Functional Grammar. Historical discourse has undergone numerous studies and achieved great results in terms of rhetorical study, literary analysis, genre and linguistics, which have led to various interpretations of the experience in the past. Ideational metaphor, the metaphorical representation of processes and state of affairs in the experiential world, highlights the vitality of language in the process of construing experience. Ideational metaphor in historical discourse thus has the potential to influence the experiential reconstrual of the past. The present research is an endeavor to find out the features and functions of ideational metaphor in historical discourse.The research adopts qualitative method to carry out the analysis of data randomly selected from two historical works both concerned with modern Chinese history. Metaphor of transitivity, verbalization and nominalization are the major concerns during the analysis of metaphorical historical descriptions of the past so as to provide a general picture of ideational metaphor in its process of reconstruing historical experience. The analysis of data shows that the application of ideation metaphor during the representation of the past helps to reconstrue a different picture of the experiential world. Metaphorical choices of process types can create a dynamic state of the past or a world with stability. Verbalization of logical-semantic relations between historical events can help to make the abstract relations become explicit actions, which not only activates the state of affairs but also endows the relations with a strong tendency to move forward together with the wheel of history. Moreover, verbalization can actively involve more than one logical-semantic relation in meaning realization, which cannot be simply replaced by its congruent expression through unpacking. Nominalization reconfigures such semantic elements as quality, process, circumstance and relator and so on into stable and objective entities, which not only reconstrues a world with stability but also actively interacts with other modes of ideational metaphor to represent an integrated world as a whole. However, ideational metaphor in modern historical discourse at the same time can lead to meaning loss or meaning creation in the process of reorganizing and representing the experiential world, which further results in meaning distortion in the interpretation of the past. Moreover, ideology and power can also be embedded in historical discourse through ideational metaphor.This research tentatively reveals the grammatical features and semantic functions of ideational metaphor in modern historical discourse, uncovers the power of language in the reconstrual of past experience and introduces possible interpretations towards the reading of history. It is an endeavor not only to discover the features of ideational metaphor, but also to re-examine the ways and meanings of reconstruing the past in historical discourse.