On The English "Delexical Structure" From The Perspective Of Grammatical Metaphor

The concept of "grammatical metaphor" (GM) was first put forward by Halliday in his book An Introduction to Functional Grammar in 1985. In his opinion, besides the lexical metaphor, there is another kind of metaphor on the lexico-grammatical level, which can be termed as grammatical metaphor. According to Halliday, grammatical metaphor is a kind of "variation in the expression of a given meaning" (2000, p.342), involving the transference between different grammatical domains and can be classified into two types:ideational metaphor and interpersonal metaphor according to ideational function and interpersonal function of language. Halliday holds a blurry attitude to textual metaphor, but Martin (1993) thinks textual metaphor should be included in textual metaphor, which can be classified into five types, namely internal conjunction, text reference, meta-language relation, negotiating texture and metaphorical theme and information.Grammatical metaphor, as an important component of Systemic Functional Grammar, is a core link between clause and text. The research of grammatical metaphor is a very important part in Systemic Functional Linguistics. Inspired by Halliday’s idea "metaphorical expressions are characteristics of all adult discourses" (2000. p.342). many scholars, both at home and abroad, have applied grammatical metaphor theory to discourse analysis and produced some constructive results. This thesis is intended to study English "delexical structure", a common language phenomenon, from the perspective of grammatical metaphor, trying to find out the linguistic realizations and functions of grammatical metaphor in "delexical structure". The findings of the analysis can be summarized as follows:Firstly, the English "delexical structure" mainly reflects ideational metaphor and textual metaphor of grammatical metaphor. Secondly, realization of ideational metaphor in English "delexical structure" is reflected in trans-category transference, namely lexico-category transference, rank-scale transference, double semantic features and process transference. Textual metaphor in this structure is reflected in metaphorical theme, metaphorical information structure and cohesive device of "eventive noun". Lastly, there are some functional causes of "delexical structure" and this type of structure undergoes the process of "demetaphorization".This study of English "delexical structure" based on grammatical metaphor may not only enrich grammatical metaphor theory but also enhance English creativity, contributing to our English writing and reading ability.