A Study On Adiectivisation Of Grammatical Metaphor In Chinese Conversational Discourse

The relationship between form and meaning has long been the focus of linguistic studies. Systemic Functional Linguistics endeavors to interpret this relationship from the perspective of grammatical metaphor (GM). In general, semantic meaning is congruently realized by its lexicogrammatical form. However, in daily interactions, speakers sometimes also utter expressions where the semantic meaning deviates from its original lexicogrammatical form, thus forming what Halliday (1985,2013) terms as grammatical metaphor. Grammatical metaphor constitutes a realignment between the semantic meaning and its corresponding grammatical element which involves the element shift in the lexicogrammatical and semantic strata. Halliday (1985,2013) classifies grammatical metaphors into 13 subcategories on the basis of element shift, among which 4 are represented by the shift from other elements into adjectives. This process is thus labeled as adjectivisation.Taking a Chinese face-to-face TV talk show as the data of analysis, this thesis is dedicated to the study of adjectivisation in Chinese conversational discourse from six aspects, namely the classifications, distributions, transfer methods, metaphorical co-occurrence, demetaphorization, and functions. It first presents the classifications of adjectivisation and the distribution of each subcategory in the collected data. Based on the classifications, the thesis carries out a detailed analysis of the transfer methods of the subcategories of adjectivisation from both the lexicogrammatical and the semantic strata. In addition, this thesis elaborates on the distinctive phenomena in the process of adjectivisation such as metaphoric co-occurrence and demetaphorization. Lastly, it summarizes the functions of adjectivisation in Chinese conversational discourse.The analysis in this thesis shows that amongst all the subcategories of adjectivisation, the one represented by the transfer from verb to adjective takes up the largest proportion. It is followed by the ones represented by the transfers from adverbial group/prepositional phrase to adjective, from noun to adjective, and lastly from conjunction to adjective. This thesis proposes the transfer methods for each subcategory, indicating how the element shift in each category contributes to the occurrence of adjectivisation. The study in this thesis also shows that adjectivised grammatical metaphor represented by the transfer from adverbial group to adjective and that represented by the transfer from noun to adjective are characterized by metaphoric co-occurrence. In other words, these two types of adjectivisation cannot appear alone without the emergence of other subcategories of grammatical metaphor. This research finds out that some idiomatically congruent expressions are grammatically incongruent, which means certain cases in adjectivisation have become conventionalized in everyday language use, thus becoming demetaphorized. Lastly, this thesis pins down two functions of adjectivisation in Chinese conversational discourse, namely idiomaticity and compactness. Adjectivisation can produce more idiomatic speeches and combine separate grammatical units in a compact manner.