A Unique Access to Classical Chinese Cultural Gem--Song Ci from the Perspective of Grammatical Metaphor

Abstract

As the most eminent prestige of the unconstrained school, Su shi苏轼(1037-1101) is renowned for the open-minded and vigorous writing style in his masterpieces. Nevertheless, his emotional tenderness and subtlety reflected in the poetry is also highly appreciated and enjoys enormously huge popularity. Among the numerous classics of his masterpieces, a most valued one is Jiang Chengzi 江城子 which is in essence an elegy in memory of his deceased wife Wang Fu 王弗. Having been widely circulated among the public, this Ci 词(poem)initiated a fair cascade of researches and discussion amid the academic world. While most scholars conducted researches on its beauty of rhythm and beauty of poetic imagery, this article will analyze the two authoritative English versions from a brand new perspective---the perspective of Grammatical Metaphor, focusing on the variation of transitivity processes in the two translations. Metaphor is one of the most pervasive linguistic phenomena in our daily communication. The widely acknowledged definition of metaphor among linguists is: “replacing a word with another which is similar but not equivalent in meaning, stressing their identity instead of simile”. Being the first to propose the notion of grammatical metaphor, Halliday reckoned that there is such a thing as grammatical metaphor, where the variation is essentially in the grammatical forms although often entailing some lexical variation as well. Grammatical metaphor is one of the most significant components of systemic functional grammar, which plays a central role in transiting clauses to discourses. It triggers transference of processes in the transitivity system thus effecting the construing of experiential facts.