英语网络新闻语篇里的语法隐喻及其作用分析

林予婷

（北京师范大学，北京 100875）

英语网络新闻语篇里的语法隐喻及其作用分析

林予婷

（北京师范大学，北京 100875）

从韩礼德系统功能语言学的角度，探讨了英语网络新闻语篇中的语法隐喻现象，并进一步解释了不同类型的语法隐喻在语篇中的功能和作用。旨在更好地理解系统功能语法概念，分析语法隐喻在英语网络新闻语篇中的使用情况，揭示英语网络新闻语篇的语言特点。

语法隐喻；英语网络新闻语篇；功能；系统功能语法

1 Introduction

Systemic functional grammar （SFG） provides a unique perspective on language in use. As part of the SFG theory, the concept of “grammatical metaphor” was first put forward in M. A.K. Halliday’s Introduction to Functional Grammar （1985）. By complementing the traditional view on metaphor, grammatical metaphor brings up a new, effective approach to analyze and understand metaphors in human language.

Metaphorical elements exist in all adult discourse, especially the written language, where the “written kind of complexity”［1］involves plenty of grammatical metaphors. However, in Halliday’s work, little attention is paid to the grammatical metaphors in other registers of adult written language except for the scientific and technical. We believe that the online news discourse, with its resemblance to the scientific register in terms of objectivity and accuracy, is also rich in grammatical metaphors.［2］This paper thus presents a brief analysis on the grammatical metaphors in online English news, to approach a better understanding of SFG, to reveal some characteristics of online English news’ language, and to explore the possible functions grammatical metaphors perform in online English.

The following analysis is based on Halliday’s Introduction to Functional Grammar （1985）; all the texts analyzed are taken from the online English news website CNN.com （http://edition. cnn. com/）.

2 Grammatical metaphor, a systemic－functional perspective on metaphor

Grammatical metaphor is introduced against the background of the traditional perspective on metaphor. The traditional notion of“lexical metaphor” viewed metaphor “from below”. That is to say,the linguists start from a certain lexeme and then analyze the transferred meaning it carries. Halliday complements this traditional perspective with a perspective “from above”. This perspective begins with a certain meaning, and asks how it can be realized by various expressions. Metaphor is thus described as “variation in the expression of meanings”, or lexicogrammatical variations. It is this shift in perspective that brings Halliday to “grammatical metaphor”. As the view “from above” focuses more on grammatical variation than lexical variation, Halliday perceives that variations in grammatica constructions can bring about metaphor, which he accordingly names “grammatical metaphor”. In contrast to grammatical metaphor, the term “congruence” is applied to grammatical forms that are not metaphorical, i.e. the“typical ways of saying things”.

Ideational and interpersonal are two important “metafunctions”of language in SFG theory. Halliday thereby further classifies gramma

tical metaphor into two types: ideational metaphor and interpersonal metaphor. English online news abounds in both types of grammatical metaphor. In the follow ing paragraphs, metaphors in online English news will be examined according to their types.

3 Grammatical metaphor and its functions in online English news

3.1 Ideational grammatical metaphor in online English news

Ideational grammatical metaphor is also called metaphor of transitivity, as it occurs when transitivity configuration changes to make a congruent expression incongruent. Such metaphors are prevalent in online English news, for example, “Quarterly growth sees Japan stay ahead of China”. Compared with its congruent equivalence “Japan stays ahead of China in quarterly growth”, the former sentence with ideational metaphor varies grammatically in transitivity construction, i.e. the process “stay” is replaced by a different process “see”; meanwhile “Quarterly growth” is made the participant, or the “senser” of the metal process “see”. Below are more examples with ideational grammatical metaphor in online English news （Sentence 1 represents the metaphorical sentence;Sentence 2 represents Sentence 1’s congruent equivalence）:

a.1 Shen Xue and Zhao Hongbo fulfilled a quest that had previously eluded them.

a.2 Shen Xue and Zhao Hongbo fulfilled a quest that they previously failed to fulfill.

b.1 The husband－and－wife team had retired from Olympic competition, but was coaxed back by the hope of claiming gold.

b.2 The husband－and－wife team had retired from Olympic competition, but they hoped to win gold. So they came back to the game.

c.1 An injury forced her to stay home.

c.2 She injured herself, and had to stayed home.

Comparing sentence c.1 with sentence c.2, we can notice the verb “injured”（process） is replaced by its noun form “injury”（participant） to create ideational metaphor. Similarly, in sentence b.1 the verb “hoped” is reworded as a noun “hope”. In a word, in both c.2 and b.2, processes and properties are “reworded metaphorically as nouns”.［1］This phenomenon belongs to what Halliday terms “nominalization”, the “most powerful” device for producing grammatical metaphor.

One feature of nominalization is that it can sometimes increase the sentence’s lexical density. This decides nominalization’s popularity in online English news writing, where brevity and pithiness are required. By turning intricate clausal patterns into simple nominal constructions, nominalization helps to pack information densely into online news article, making it concise in style and rich in information.At the same time, the news could also rank higher in popular news searching engines such as Google News, since many online readers search news by keywords, and news with a high information density often has a better chance to come at top positions in search engines.

In addition, nominalization helps to avoid passing obscure or unclear information to readers, thus giving online English news a sense of accuracy and professionalism. For example, when reporting about a Hamas official killed by an unidentified person, it is better to write “Last month’s slaying of a top Hamas official...”than “Somebody slew a top Hamas official last month...” In the latter congruent expression, the mention of the actor “somebody”makes the news seem to be unprofessional written, as if the journalist has not investigated fully before releasing his article.While in the former incongruent expression, by nominalizing the process “slew” into its noun form “slaying”, the unidentified actor of the process “slew” is left out naturally. It is in this way that nominalization enables online news to achieve precision.

3.2 Interpersonal metaphors in online English news

In SFG , the interpersonal metafunction of language concerns both modality and mood. Hence two kinds of interpersonal metaphor can be distinguished: metaphors of modality and metaphors of mood.

3.2.1 Metaphors of modality

In metaphors of modality, modal meaning is expressed“outside the clause”, for instance in a separated projecting clause,while congruently it should be expressed “in the clause” by means of modal elements. In online journalism, metaphors of modality are often employed to realize modal meaning “explicitly” in additional clauses. For example, in a news article about the earthquake in Haiti, the reporter writes, “It seems likely that the international community will come up with the financial resources to help”. We can reword this sentence in a congruent way, “Perhaps the international community will come up with the financial resources to help”. The former sentence is metaphorical, because the proposition in it is not “It seems likely…”, but “the international community will come up…” Here the proposition is not expressed in the projecting clause but the projected clause; meanwhile the modal meaning is not realized in the clause as the modal element“perhaps”, but outside the clause, in the additional projecting clause “It seems likely that…” Below are more expressions involving metaphors of modality:

a.1 Nearly everyone agrees that performing an energy retrofit will make your place more comfortable and save a lot on bills.

a.2 Performing an energy retrofit will almost certainly make your place more comfortable and save a lot on bills.

b.1 It is possible that Valdes is coming to do something similar with the energy sector.

b.2 Possibly Valdes is coming to do something similar with the energy sector.

c.1 It is assumed that Bloomberg would have to drop $500 million of his own money to compete for the White House.

c.2 Perhaps Bloomberg would have to drop $500 million of his own money to compete for the White House.

What function do metaphors of modality perform in online English news? Since biased statement, promotional writing and advertisement spread rather widely on the Internet, web readers often doubt online news’ credibility. One effective way to gain credibility is to write without subjectivity. Metaphors of modality,as suggested by Halliday, may help to conceal that the speaker is expressing his subjective opinions. The metaphorical constructions“Nearly everyone agrees that”, “It is possible that”, “It is obvious that” and “It is assumed that” actually mean “I believe”. However,since they are “objective” and “explicit” expressions of probability,they make it possible to claim “explicitly that the probability is objective”.

Let’s take a look at sentence a.1 “Nearly everyone agrees that performing an energy retrofit will make your place more comfortable and save a lot on bills”, which is taken from a report about the U.S. government’s new policy of promoting home energy retrofit. In order not to sound too favorable for the government’s side, the writer uses the projecting clause “Nearly everyone agreesthat…” to stress that the opinion comes from an objective“everybody”, rather than the author’s subjective self. By realizing objectivity in a projecting clause and encoding the proposition in a projection, a sense of objectivity is earned.

3.2.2 Metaphors of mood

In SFG, mood expresses speech function: statement, question,offer or command. Usually, the function of statement is realized by the declarative, question by the interrogative, command by the imperative or modulated declarative, and offer by virtually all types of moods. When a function is not realized by usual, default ways,for instance the function of statement is realized in imperative instead of declarative, metaphors of mood occurs. In the case of online English news, some metaphors of mood are found in news headlines, as statements expressed in interrogative sentences. For example:

a.1 Iran has guided－missile destroyer?

a.2 Iran has launched its guided missile destroyer.

b.1 My own private… hydrogen power station?

b.2 I have my own private hydrogen power station.

c.1 “Basterds” as Best Picture?

c.2 “Basterds” is nominated as Best Picture. （Headline of an editorial about the nominations of Oscar）

The sentences above are all declarative in their congruent forms. Why the online news reporters do not choose the default mood——the declarative, but its metaphorical variant——the interrogative, to encode the statements? This is because the incongruent expressions carry strong emotions towards the news topics, while such emotions are lacking in the congruent constructi ons. For example, the emotion suggested by sentences a.1 and b.1 is great surprise: “though under such international pressure, Iran still develops its guided－missile destroyer” and “nowadays,technology is so developed that it is possible a hydrogen power station can be personal property”. What actually happens here is that the news reporter implies his emotion in the news, but disguises the subjective nature of his emotion by employing metaphors of mood.

Besides attaching emotion to online English news, metaphors of mood in headlines also help to attract readers’ attention. Since most news’ headlines are written in declarative, headlines in the interrogative form can better catch web readers’ eyes.

4 Conclusion

Online English news site has become an increasingly influential news media. As an important notion in systemic functional grammar,grammatical metaphor occurs widely in online English news, and performs a variety of significant functions. Ideational grammatical metaphor, especially in the form of nominalization, makes online English news brief in length while rich in information. Besides,obscure informati?on is kept from readers by means of ideational grammatical metaphor. Metaphor of modality, as one component of interpersonal grammatical metaphor, enables online English news to earn objectivity. While the other type of interpersonal grammatical metaphor, metaphor of mood, helps to attaches emotion to online English news as well as attract readers’ attention.It is in those ways that grammatical metaphor shows its value in online English news writing, and defines the characteristics of online English news.

1 Halliday, M.A.K. Introduction to Functional Grammar［M］.London: Arnold, 1985

2 Nongnuch Chaisuk. A Survey of the Good Characteristics of Online English－Language Business News as Perceived by Asian Newspaper Writers［D］. Unpublished MA thesis. University of Thai, 2003

3 Taverniers, Miriam. “Grammatical metaphor in SFL: A historiography of the introduction and initial study of the term”. In: Simon－Vandenbergen, Anne－Marie; Miriam Taverniers & Louise Ravelli （eds.） Grammatical Metaphor: Views from systemic functional linguistics［A］. （Current Issues in Linguistic Theory,236.） Amsterdam: Benjamins, 2003: 5～33

4 Morkes, J., and Nielsen, J. “Concise, SCANNABLE, and Objective:How to Write for the Web”, 1997. http:/ /www.useit.com/papers/webwriting/writing.html

Grammatical Metaphors and Its Functions in Online English News Discourse—— analysis from the perspective of M.A.K. Halliday’s systemic functional grammar

Lin Yuting

This paper explores grammatical metaphors and its functions in online English news from a systemic－functional perspective, by first introducing the notion of grammatical metaphor to online English news and then analyzing different kinds of grammatical metaphors in online English news respectively. The aim is to approach a better understanding of Systemic functional grammar, to explore the possible functions grammatical metaphors perform in online English, and to reveal some characteristics of online English news language.

grammatical metaphor; online English news; function; systemic functional grammar

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