An Analysis of Discourse Occurrence Mechanism of Grammatical Metaphors

Abstract

The theory of grammatical metaphor is an important tool for human beings to understand the world. Its application makes texts have strong explanatory and persuasive powers, and contributes to the production of good cognitive effects. However, many scholars have found that there are many gray areas that are difficult to identify in the study of grammatical metaphors, which place too much emphasis on the relationship between the forms of language expressions, but do not pay enough attention to the semantic relationships embodied by expressions, resulting in different grammatical metaphors. Starting from the grammatical and metaphorical views of systemic functional linguistics, this paper affirms the grammatical-metaphorical relationship between different expressions that express the meaning of the same proposition, discusses the discourse generation mechanism of grammatical metaphor, emphasizing the importance of register in the formation of grammatical metaphors. It regards language expressions that meet the needs of the register as congruent, treats language expressions that deviate from the register as metaphors, and emphasizes that semantic relevance is the premise and foundation of the existence of grammatical metaphors.