学术写作中的语法隐喻现象的研究_英语论文

A Study on Grammatical Metaphor in academic writing

摘要

隐喻作为日常生活中一种常见的语言现象，已经广泛地应用于认知语言学，传统文学，心理学等领域中。韩礼德在系统功能语法中提出了语法隐喻的概念，以认知科学为基础的语法隐喻理论将隐喻的研究推向了一个新的高度。自从韩礼德的语法隐喻理论受到国内外学者广泛的关注，语法隐喻的研究已经有了大量的实例。研究证明，语法隐喻是学术文章中普遍存在的语言特征。国内外学者也从各个角度尝试分析语法隐喻在学术写作中的功能，但是运用定量分析手段分析语法隐喻的研究还不多见。

本研究尝试分析学术文本中的语法隐喻现象，通过运用定量分析的研究手段，统计出语法隐喻在学术文本中出现的频率，通过分析这些语法隐喻现象的出现频率，研究语法隐喻在学术文本的功能和作用，并根据研究结果指导英语学术论文的写作。

本研究从国际权威的期刊《科学》中选择一篇科技文献作为研究的语料，运用这一语料对语法隐喻现象进行定量分析。应用韩礼德的语法隐喻理论，统计出该语料中各种类型的语法隐喻的出现次数，并对这些语法隐喻在学术文本中的功能进行初步的解释和探讨。研究结果显示在该学术文本中存在大量的语法隐喻，其中名词化隐喻被大量运用于学术文本中，而及物性隐喻也占据了一定比例。

在此研究的基础上，本论文发现了语法隐喻对学术写作有重要意义，即运用语法隐喻能使学术论文更加规范，客观，简洁和流畅。因此在学术写作中合理地运用语法隐喻能很大程度地提高学生学术写作能力。

关键词：语法隐喻； 定量分析；学术写作

Abstract

Metaphor as a common linguistic phenomenon in daily life, has been widely used in the fields of cognitive science, traditional literature, psychology and so on. The grammatical metaphor, which is put forward by Halliday in the functional grammar system, promotes the study of metaphor to a new and high level. Since Halliday’s grammatical metaphor theory has attracted many scholars’ attention, an enormous number of researches in grammatical metaphor have been presented. It is proved that grammatical metaphor as a linguistic feature is prevalent in academic articles. By applying quantitative analytical methodology, this paper attempts to discuss how does grammatical metaphor function in academic articles. There are many researches analyzing functions of grammatical metaphor in academic articles, however, rare studies explain grammatical metaphor through quantitative analysis.

This study attempts to analyze the phenomenon of grammatical metaphor in academic articles. By applying quantitative approach, this study calculates out the occurrence number of grammatical metaphor in academic articles. The research data will be analyzed to study how grammatical metaphor functions in academic articles. 

This study randomly selects one science article, from the well-know, authoritative scientific journal Science, as a small corpus. Based on Halliday’s grammatical metaphor theory, types and occurrence times of grammatical metaphors will be counted in this corpus. The research results reveal that a lot of grammatical metaphors occur in the selected scientific article, in which nominalization is applied extensively while metaphor of transitivity also occupies a certain proportion. 

The study finds out that the crucial significance of grammatical metaphor to academic writing, that is, grammatical metaphor can make academic articles more formal, objective, concise and fluent. Rational using grammatical metaphors in academic writing can greatly improve students’ academic writing ability.

Keywords: grammatical metaphor; quantitative analysis; academic writing

Contents

摘 要 I

Abstract II

Acknowledgements III

Contents IV

Chapter One Introduction 1

1.1 Background 1

1.2 Significance 2

1.3 Organization of the thesis 2

Chapter Two Literature Review 4

2.1 Previous studies of metaphor 4

2.2 Grammatical metaphor 5

2.2.1 Ideational metaphor 6

2.3 Classification of ideational metaphors 10

2.3.1 Classification of metaphor of transitivity 10

2.4 Summary 13

Chapter Three Research Design 15

3.1 Research purpose and question 15

3.2 Research procedures 15

3.2.1 Data collection 15

3.2.2 Analysis procedures 16

3.3 Analysis of ideational metaphors 16

3.3.1 Analysis of metaphor of transitivity 16

3.3.2 Analysis of nominalization 18

Chapter Four Discussions and Finds 20

4.1 Ideational metaphor in academic article 20

4.2 Metaphor of Transitivity 20

4.1.2 Functions of metaphor of transitivity 21

4.3 Nominalization 22

4.3.1 Functions of nominalization 22

Chapter Five Conclusion 24

5.1 Conclusion 24

4.3 Limitations and suggestions 24

References 25