A Comparative Analysis Of Ideational Grammatical Metaphor In College English Writing

Grammatical Metaphor theory is first mentioned by Halliday in his famous work“Language as a Social Semiotic”, in which Halliday makes a new point of view to thestudy of metaphor, and since then he and many scholars devotes to many relevantresearches. In Halliday’s (1994) classical writing An Introduction to FunctionalGrammar, on the basis of his own special perceiving to the nature and function ofgrammatical metaphor, Halliday lays a solid foundation for grammatical metaphor.Halliday (1985:342) defines the essence of the grammatical metaphor distinguishedwith congruent forms, which is shown as follow:Based on Systemic Functional Grammar, Halliday puts emphasis on explainingand judging metaphor from the perspectives of grammar and function of language andclassifies the grammatical metaphor into two kinds: ideational and interpersonalgrammatical metaphors and advances the ideational grammatical metaphor system byproposing13types. The theory is widely adopted in the aspects of teaching,especially teaching of English in China. Chinese teachers and scholars have maderelevant researches about teaching of English reading, writing, etc. For the purpose ofadvancing the development of teaching English writing in China, this thesis makes acomparative analysis of the IGM adopted in native and non-native speakers’ writingand explains the effect IGM make to construe a more native writing style. Thefindings of this research are shown as follow.(1) A huge variation of IGM is shown through the general statistic of thedistribution of IGM in essays of both native and non-native group. In the aspect of thenumber, native speakers employed much more IGM in their writing than non-nativespeaker did.(2) Considering the variation of the adopted IGM, non-native speakers employeda wider range than non-native speakers did. While the essays of non-native speakersmost focus on two types of IGM (Type1and2), those of native speakers covers6types (Type1,2,5,6,11and13), among which three types-Type5,11and13-alltakes large proportions and never or rarely adopted in non-native speakers’ essays.Combined with the variation in frequency, the huge difference in the adopted rangereflects the deep gulf between Chinese and native English speakers’ writing, whichoffer a direction to teachers’ instruction of writing to Chinese students in their teaching practice.(3) Through the comparative analysis of the extracts about Type5of IGM, it isfound out that this type provide a metaphorical way for expression, which contributeto the simplification and shaping a tenser structure of the text-a more coherent andcohesive writing style than non-native speakers’.(4) Through the comparative analysis of the extracts about Type11of IGM,besides shaping a tenser structure, it is also found out that this type of IGM helpsavoid the subjectivity expressed by the author during writing and highlight theobjectivity of the essay which makes the argument more reliable and convincible.(5) Through the comparative analysis of the extracts about Type13of IGM, it isalso found out that this type contribute to a tenser structure, and make the text morecoherent and cohesive.(6) In general, much more IGM are adopted by native speakers with a fiercervariation. The metaphorical expressions in native speakers essay make contribution tosimplification of expression and a tense structure with stronger cohesion andcoherence, which is the very difference between the native writing styles and thenon-native ones. The detailed analysis of three types of IGM, which is the bestrepresentation of the huge gap between Chinese students’ writing and the advancednative writing, supply examples to teachers’ instruction to Chinese students about howto develop students’ writing to a more native and advanced style during the process ofteaching of writing.