A Systemic Functional Study of the English Nominal Group as Interpersonal and Textual Grammatical Metaphor

Manliang Li

doi:10.5539/ells.v5n1p47

Abstract

The English nominal group is a significant grammatical unit in English, and its internal structure is very complex. Grammatical metaphor is one of the key concepts in systemic functional linguistics and the study of grammatical metaphor can be conducted from the experiential, the interpersonal and the textual perspectives. The literature to date shows that grammatical metaphor is a crucial property in English and it is mostly studied in relation to the English clauses. Grammatical metaphor in relation to the English nominal group can also be explored from the three perspectives. This paper aims to discuss how grammatical metaphor is related to the English nominal group from the interpersonal and the textual perspectives. The data used in this paper are all obtained from literature of English grammar by observation. Meanwhile, this research adopts a qualitative, descriptive and explanatory method, and analyses the English nominal group as interpersonal and textual grammatical metaphor on the basis of the metafunctions in systemic functional linguistics. The findings show that interpersonal and textual grammatical metaphor is also a property of the English nominal group.

Highlights

This paper aims to explore how interpersonal and textual grammatical metaphor is related to the English nominal group
This paper investigated the connection between the grammatical metaphor and the English nominal group from the interpersonal and the textual perspectives with regard to the interpersonal and textual metafunctions in SFL, the interpersonal grammatical metaphor and the textual grammatical metaphor
These principles are mainly oriented at the English clause, but we conducted an exploratory analysis of the English nominal group as grammatical metaphor from the two perspectives

Summary

Introduction

This paper aims to explore how interpersonal and textual grammatical metaphor is related to the English nominal group. Grammatical metaphor is a significant element of systemic functional linguistics (SFL hereafter). Li (2014) has discussed the English nominal group as experiential grammatical metaphor. The English nominal group as grammatical metaphor can be discussed from the interpersonal and textual perspectives. This study will do a tentative filling of this blank. This paper will investigate the English nominal group as grammatical metaphor from the interpersonal and the textual perspectives

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