Coherent Mode For Textual Metaphor In Fortress Besieged

The diversion of studies on metaphor from a lexico-grammatical level to a semantic level has brought a lot of inspiration to the research of discoursal studies on metaphor. More and more scholars have noticed textual functions of metaphor, but no consensus has been formed on the definition of textual metaphor. It is Martin who puts forward the concept of textual metaphor and categorizes it as a subcategory of grammatical metaphor. As studies move on, some scholars point out that textual metaphor includes not only grammatical metaphor but also lexical metaphor.Based on studies of predecessors, we view textual metaphor as a combined metaphor of both lexical metaphor and textual grammatical metaphor in this research, and take ChMen’s Fortress Besieged as the research corpus to study the coherent mode for textual metaphor. In this study, following the metaphor identification procedure (MIP) designed by Pragglejaz Group, we begin with collecting lexical metaphors in Fortress Besieged and end with477lexical metaphors. Then we choose the classification of textual metaphor provided by Martin as the criterion. According to the five categories of textual grammatical metaphor, namely meta-message, text reference, internal conjunction, negotiating texture and metaphorical theme, we classify the477collected lexical metaphors, and select168useful data which can be studied as a combination of lexical metaphor and textual grammatical metaphor. Then discussion turns to discourse analysis of the168textual metaphors collected in Fortress Besieged. The research of coherent mode for textual metaphor in Fortress Besieged is implemented on both syntactic and semantic levels, including both cohesion and coherence of textual metaphor and focuses on textual functions of textual metaphors.Through analyses on cases of textual metaphor in Fortress Besieged, we can obtain the result that syntactic cohesion and coherence of textual metaphor is realized by textual grammatical metaphor with the help of textual grammatical units. Additionally, basic semantic cohesion and coherence of textual metaphor is established by lexical metaphor, and textual grammatical metaphor helps to maintain semantic cohesion and coherence of textual metaphor as well.