Comprehending Grammatical Metaphor In Legal English Text: Its Semantic Processing Procedures

Halliday proposed grammatical metaphor in1985for the first time. In his view,metaphor occurs not only at the lexical level, but also at the grammatical level.Grammatical metaphor refers to metaphor that occurs at the grammatical level. AfterHalliday, many scholars both at home and aboard have conducted further studies fromdifferent perspectives, such as its classification and mechanism. Besides, some otherscholars have explored grammatical metaphor in scientific discourses. A small numberof scholars have explored the relationship between grammatical metaphor and thedifficulty of a discourse, holding the view that the more grammatical metaphor existsin the discourse, the more complicated the discourse becomes. However, such studiesare mainly confined to general English discourse. Researches on grammaticalmetaphor in legal English texts are rare. Grammatical metaphor in legal English textsis used in abundance, because it performs a powerful cohesive device. In other words,grammatical metaphor is a crucial characteristic of legal English. Therefore, it isnecessary to analyze grammatical metaphor in legal English texts and explores how tocomprehend it.Based on the grammatical metaphor theory in Systemic-Functional Linguistics,the thesis first discusses the factors leading to the complexity of grammaticalmetaphor, which are lexical density, dual semantic feature and cognitive efforts. Next,it explores how to recognize interpersonal metaphor and ideational metaphor fromlexicogrammatical and semantic perspective. Then, it explores the semanticprocessing procedure of comprehending ideational metaphor and interpersonalmetaphor in legal English texts, that is, transferring the metaphorical form into itscongruent one.This study not only helps the learners to promote their legal Englishcomprehension ability, but also offers some enlightenment to legal English teaching.