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1. Introduction
In the era of the economic globalization and the information globalization, the press and various media is an important source to access information. The special English used in the press is the news English. Knowing the features in news English can help us get more accurate information around the world, and can fully enjoy the fastness and convenience of the information age. Discourse of Analysis on the news has had many years of history, most of the analysis is about the vocabulary features, rhetorical features and grammatical features of news English from the linguistic point of view, in addition, there is the composition from the perspective of news discourse analysis of news Discourse features. From the perspective of Systematic Functional Grammar, this paper takes English discourse as the subject and researches the different roles and functions that News Discourse Grammar Metaphor and the different metaphors in news discourse can play. Research on metaphor has experienced the circuitous course of decline and flourish. At the first, the research is done from the perspective of rhetoric, that is the traditional metaphor. After that, systematic functional linguistics study the metaphor from the point of view of expressing the meaning, and they consider that the metaphor is not limited in the vocabulary level, but is often seen in the syntax level. Grammatical Metaphor is proposed first by Halliday, who treated it as an important component of the theory of system language functions and made significant contribution to the metaphor study. According to his theory of grammatical metaphor, grammatical metaphor includes two types conceptual metaphor and interpersonal metaphor, nominalization is the most common grammatical metaphor form, especially in the science and technology discourse and news discourse. A large number of studies have shown before that the use of grammatical metaphor theory can successfully deconstruct the science and technology discourse. Because of its functionality, this paper aims to explore the function and application of the grammatical metaphor theory in the news discourse. By analyzing the role of grammatical metaphor in building news discourse, we can explain the characteristics of the news discourse and can better understand the news discourse theory.
2. An overview of grammatical metaphor theory 2.1 The Medieval Theory of Grammatical Metaphor
Research on metaphor can be traced back to the study of the Rhetoric during the ancient Greece, for a long time, metaphor has been the concern of writers as a rhetorical device. About the history of metaphor, first, the study began from the discussion in the On Rhetoric and Poetics of the Ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle. The original metaphor is considered primarily as a variant of
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language which is a modification component of the language, and is studied in an all-round way. According to Aristotle, the metaphor was defined as: one word for a concept used to refer to another one. Therefore, the metaphor involves a transference. As the different ways of the transference, Aristotle divided metaphor into four categories: a. from the genus to the species ; b. from the species to the genus; c. from one species to another; d. a matter of analogy. The former three are simple metaphor, but the last one analogy is a puzzling but fascinating metaphor (Yan, 1995). Analogy metaphor refers to the four kinds of things in a sentence, B is to A is as D is to C. Therefore, B and D are interchangeable, and sometimes the items which are associated with the transference may also be changed. For example: The wine cup is to Dionysus as the shield is to Ares. In this sentence, the phrase cup of Ares can replaces the shield, while the shield of Dionysus can also replaces the cup (Grube, 1983). Aristotle's main contribution to the metaphor is that he considers appropriate use of metaphor can increase the charm of the expression of our daily lives, and also takes note of the significance of innovation and education of the metaphor itself. He speaks highly of the metaphor and regards it as the most important thing people should grasp by far (Hawkes, 1980). However, he stresses that the use of metaphor can only be limited to the field of poetry, this view is influenced by the culture at that time, so it is biased in some degree. Hawkes(1980) also points out that the Aristotle's study of metaphor does not extend to the essential aspects of the language. In any case, Aristotle's metaphor represents the traditional theory of metaphor and puts the foundation for the metaphor development.
2.2 The Introduction and Classification of Contemporary Metaphor Theory 2.2.1 The Content of Grammatical Metaphor
Referring to the traditional theory of metaphor, Halliday has been revised and improved his Functional Grammar constantly, and puts forward the concept of grammatical metaphor in the An Introduction to Functional Grammar , a book of 1985 and 1994, and he thinks the metaphor is also a transference, which uses a kind of grammar means to replace another ,but expresses the same grammatical meaning. Grammatical metaphor has its unique performance characteristics as a kind of grammar phenomenon. The congruence and metaphor are two means to express the meaning, both of which have difference in the event of the order, frequency, and cognitive habit. The congruence, from the concept sense of language, reflects the participants of the process in
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the event through the use of noun, reflects the process itself with the verb, reflects the characteristics of things with the adjective, embodies the time, place, tools, methods environmental significance with the adverb or prepositional phrase, and expresses the logical meaning with the conjunction, so that it can make the surface meaning of the lexical grammar same as the deep meaning of the utterance. Such as: [1a] The driver drove the bus too fast down the hill, so the brakes failed. This sentence consists of two small sentences, of which three participants are: the noun phrase the driver, the bus and the brakes, the two processes are reflected by the verb drove and failed, the meaning of the speed is reflected by the adverb phrases too fast, the meaning of the direction used the prepositional phrase down the hill, the meaning of cause and effect is embodied by the conjunction. The metaphor, is to break the routine, so that the surface meaning of the lexical grammar is different from the deep meaning of utterance. This phenomenon is that there is the tension between levels of different languages in the functional linguistics. It is this existence and role of tension that lead to the emergence of grammatical metaphor. Such as: [1b] The driver overrapid downhill driving of the bus caused brake failure. In the [1b], the meaning of three participants and environmental in [1a] have become the modifier noun phrases, logical sense into the process itself, while the process becomes the participants through the nominalization. This example tells us that the tension exists in the vocabulary and utterance grammar significance level and provides a potential possibility of the emergence of grammar metaphor. But any linguistic phenomenon that wants to be truly metaphor also must meet two basic conditions: (A) They themselves are metaphor, and metaphor must meet three conditions: 1) to involve two kinds of meaning; 2) both belong to different levels of meaning, one is straight and the other is transferred, or one is the surface and the other is the deep; 3) a meaning has similarities with another, or that a sense is the manifestation or symbolic meaning of another. (B) They must occur in the syntax level, because the meaning of grammatical metaphor involved is expressed through the vocabulary in the use of grammatical structures. Comparing to the metaphor, the congruence may occur earlier in time, this time includes three dimensions: the evolution of human language, the process of personal learning language, and the development of discourse. In addition, the congruence has high frequency and more chance to be used. In cognitive habits, it is an expression which is close to the natural state and more acceptable. Halliday(1985)considers that metaphor involves two kinds of transfer: 1) the transfer of class; 2) the transfer of grammatical function and grammatical category. In Systematic Functional Grammar, syntax component has five levels, from top to bottom, including the sentence, clause, word group/phrase, word and morpheme. From the order of transference, the conceptual metaphor is
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transferred to the lower level, the sentence - a small sentence - noun phrase, also is accompanied with the transference of the syntax category.
From the comparison of the above two sentences, on the third day in sentence [a] is the expression of time, which meets the reality and is the congruence. But on the third day in the sentence [b] becomes the feeler of a thinking process, the material process has become the process of psychology, so sentence [b] is called the metaphor. . In short, the prominent feature of grammar metaphor is the idea of function, which means the grammatical metaphor is mainly reflected in the transitive process and mutual metaphor of functional components, and finally is embodied in the transference of the word grammar level. (Hu, Zhu, 2005) From this, we can get that function determines the form, the form reflects meaning, meaning is different in different forms, but different forms can express the same concept. (Lee, 2004).
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The second is the nominalization. Noun is the most common grammatical metaphor in the word level, it makes the verb which expresses the process and the adjective which expresses the characteristic metaphorical lose functions of their own, so that they can reflect something in the form of noun, such as: They have reached the halltheir access to the hall. Technology is getting betteradvances in technology. Nominalization increases the density of the information and enriches the content of expressions through making the small sentence into a noun or noun phrase. The third is the interpersonal mood metaphor. In the functional grammar, the language has four main language functions: provide, order, statement, question. The main four functions of language are reflected by the tone in the grammar. For instance, the tone of statement can achieve the function of state, the tone of imperative can reflect the command function. However, the tone and language function do not always correspond to each other, a kind of language function can be embodied by different tones. For example: A. You should eat your breakfast. B. Have you eaten your breakfast? C. Eat your breakfast! All three sentences can express the command function from the meaning. The sentence [c] directly uses the imperative and is the congruence of the command function. A and B, reflect command function by the use of the tone of statements and questions, and both are the metaphorical form. At the same time, a tone can also express a lot of language functions. For example, the declarative sentence can also reflect the function of question and command: I wonder whether you finished your homework. (Interrogative function). You should finish your homework. (Command function). The variation of tone is called mood metaphor when it transfers from one tone to another, and it reflects the relationship between grammar and semantic features is not one to one in the mood metaphor. One tone also can reflect two or more language functions. (Chang, 2001) Those examples have proved Halliday point of view option is the meaning. (1985) and such variation of tone expands the language function in the semantic level. The fourth is the interpersonal modal metaphor. Modality is used to express the speakers judge of thing. The meaning of modality is expressed through the modal verbs adverbs and extension of predicate to express. But this is not the only way of expression of modality. Modality also can be expressed by a small clause, Halliday called this phenomenon as metaphor. For example: He is certainly a good boy. This sentence contains a modal component. We can turn it into a small clause with non-modal composition He is a good boy, and the metaphor form is It is certain that he is a good boy, in which the small clause it is certain is equivalent to an
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metaphorical structure in the syntax level. Modal metaphor is formed in the process, which the modality transfers from the congruence to the metaphor.
3. Introduction of the News English Discourse 3.1 The Structural Features of News English Discourse
According to different classification methods, the news English has many types. For example, on the base of the nature of the incident, news can be divided into hard news and soft news. Hard news is pure news coverage that means the theme is serious and the report has certain objective timeliness. Soft News is a kind of social news which has a strong sense of emotion, humorous writing method and not too much attention to timeliness. The common types of news literature are three major categories: news, features and commentaries or columns. Owing to the different reporters, news writing style is also different and has no fixed form. But the main structure of news is composed of headline, lead and body. Headline is summarizing the central issues of the text. Lead is usually the first paragraph of the article, providing the main topics and the most important fact. Body, on the foundation of lead, introduces more facts relevant to the subject, making it more detailed, specific, and carrying out reviews, then conclusion. Hereof, we mainly introduce the structure of informative news that is hard news, which is a widely used news types. In news reports, the lead is very important, usually in the first or two paragraphs, plays the role of pointing out the theme. This is an important feature that the news style is different from other styles. Such news reports generally use the inverted pyramid form, refers to that the most important elements is put in the form of top-heavy arrangement, the climax and conclusion of the news is put in the lead, and then the material is organized in the light of the order of the facts importance decreasing. About 90% of the news articles are written in this structure. This structure has its own advantage which can make readers fast understand the main content of the most important news.
the machine and a huge factory to use the new word and coined new words. For example, since the first time human have arrived at the moon, a large number of new words about the moon appeared in the news. Such as, mooncar, moonfall, moonwalk, moon flight and so on. Another example: Since the Washington Post reported on Nixon's resignation leading to the Watergate, the English-language newspaper often use -gate to coin new word to express the variety of scandals. (2). More loan words. To pursuit of the novelty, appropriation and conciseness of the word, and make the report worldwide, there is much more loan words used in the news reports. For example: Almost two weeks after a towering tsunami swept across the Indian Ocean, the death toll is some 150, 000 and is still climbing. (Tsunami: Japanese words). More examples of common loan words are tycoon (Japan) meaning giant, Kung Fu (Chinese) meaning Chinese Kung Fu, etc. (3). More Colloquial words. To understand English more easily, news reports often use colloquial words. Example: In the sentence, Annan Meets Clinton, Discuss Iraq Deal, the life term deal can be expressed as bargain / transaction / negotiation / problem. Another example, Corporate Scandals Put Directors in the Hot Seat. The phrase Put ... in the hot seat is U.S. slang, meaning letting someone take the electric chair, in this case, means be in the dilemma. (4). More Acronyms. To save press layout and make the text simple, reporters often put an organization, political party, organization name with the first letter of condensation form new words, cutting the head of word and tail of another word to reconstitute a new word. Example: Turkey is already in the other big European organizations, from the council of Europe to NATO. (NATO: North Atlantic Treaty Organization)
United States Department of Defense, Downing Street (London street) British Prime Minister / British Government / Cabinet, Beijing China government. (4). Metaphor. It is perhaps the most important and most frequently used figure of speech in the news, points out resemblance but with no acknowledging word. It is a figure of speech in which one thing is described in terms of another and an implied comparison between two (or more) unlike things, achieved by identifying one with the other. Examples: [a] Lets bury the hatchet. (Lets stop quarrelling or fighting and be friendly.) [b] He threw his sword into the scale. (He tried to win by force.) [c] He shoveled a path through the snow. (He cleared a path through the snow.) In the view of foregoing, we can get more about the features of the sentences grammatical rhetoric use in the news, the grammatical rhetoric use is frequently used in new discourse, could increase the quantity of information of the news sentence, versatility and literariness, and makes the report more detailed, reasonable and humanized. Knowing well this grammatical feature will be beneficial to the understanding of the whole of the news discourse.
4. Grammatical Metaphors Functions on the Role of Analyzing the News Discourse 4.1 Applications of Conceptual Metaphor
Foregoing chapter has introduced that the conceptual metaphor is divided into two types, process and nominalization. In a lot of application, the nominalization plays a crucial role. In the report, we can often find a sense can be expressed by different forms; the speaker may transfer the verbs, adjectives into nouns, sentences into phrases at the purpose of communication. However the meaning of words has not changed, only the syntax properties are changed. The nominalization often appears in the news discourse, for example: [1a] The brakes failed. participant [1b] Brake failure The item the brakes in the [1a] is a noun refers to the participant, failed is a verb that shows the physical process, but in the [1b], the sentence transfers into noun phrases. In addition to the nominalization of the verb, nominalization of adjective is also a common phenomenon. [2a] The thermoplastic is atactic. participant quality [2b] The atacticity of the thermoplastic The nominalization can be considered a process of a small packed into phrase, or two or three small words are packed into a small sentence. The following examples show very clearly the process:
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process
[3a] In order to argue that this is not so he simple points out that there are no synonyms in mental language. [3b] The argument to the contrary is basically an appeal to the lack of synonymy in mental language. The sentence [3a] contains four small clauses, and the sentence [3b] is a small clause of relational process, so how to achieve the metaphor? In the [3b], the noun phrases of the argument to the contrary and an appeal to the lack of synonymy in mental langrage, both are the results of nominalization. The negative sentence there are no synonyms is nominalized into the phrase the lack of synonymy; he points out that there are no synonyms that. . . not is nominalized into the argument to the contrary. In the three sentences above, the [a] and [b] represent separately the congruence and the metaphor. Both of them refer to the same incident, however, the choice of different language form depends not only on tradition, but is constrained by the text and discourse. We can get that the special function of nominalization is the condensing function, which can make more information as much as possible in the fewer clause. The feature just corresponds to the characteristic of the news that is using fewer words in a sentence to express more messages. It is noted that the grammatical simplification is simultaneously accompanied by the lexical density, which refers to the fact that the fewer clauses are used to accommodate the lexical items.(Halliday, 2000) is transferred into his appeals to the lack of synonymy. . . ; Small clause this is not so becomes into the contrary; to argue
[3] I would like the commission to sympathize with me and understand what I felt. Pleaded Hashe ... (idem) (Non-specific subjective expression: The commission should sympathize with me and ...) [4] but I would like the commission to help." (idem) (non-specific subjective expression: The commission should help.) The main function of modal metaphor is to accurately reflect the speaker's point of view and express the emotion. Although the reports require the facts and objectivity of the news, the tendency of the reporters subjectivity is unavoidable. In fact, the modalitys meaning of language reflects the speaker's point of view of a proposition (Zhou, 2003). Subjective modal metaphor is used to introduce a kind of view or opinion, and more likely occur in a direct quotation. Subjective metaphor of modality usually accompany with a strong subjective flavour, however, those words often come from some the authority or representative, so it also increases the objectivity and credibility of the article. Whether the view is right or wrong will not affect the objectivity and reality of the report. The subjective modality also can show the authors sympathy and support of those aspirations and demands, when it is often used to reflect the aspirations and demands. As is known, the characteristics of news coverage are objectivity and facticity, but there is more or less the reporters subjective tendency, so the modal metaphor is the common way they often use. News Reviews often take this form to publish some of the views and put forward some suggestions. It seems those reports come from other persons mouth, but the selecting material and writing are controlled in the reporters hands+hence, it can reflect the modal tendency of the author in some degree. It is the usual way to express the view of the author while making the indication of subjectivity obscure. Clear and objective modality could make the author or speaker's judgments or assertions objective and cover the real source of modality. Through the clear and objective form, the authors dress the modality as the proposition in the form of a small sentence, or nominalize the modality, so that they can make the personal view into the fixed features or the incontrovertible truth, and their views could be easily receptive by readers.
shows the question and the mood of imperative shows the order. (Fan, 2000) We call the normal form of reflecting the speech function as the congruent form of the speech. In other words, the congruent grammatical forms achieving the four language functions are the declarative sentences, interrogative sentence and imperative sentence in the traditional syntax. But in the process of communication, the speaker often uses the metaphor to achieve the above function according to the need of the context and cultural factors. For example: [5] You should come here at once. (Chang, 2001:7) [6] Could you come here at once? (idem) [7]Come here at once! (idem) All three sentences can express the command function from the point of the semantics. Sentence [7] directly use the imperative and is the congruence of the command function. Examples [5] and [6] use the statements and the tone of doubt to reflect the command function, and thus is the metaphorical form. On the contrary, a tone may reflect more than one language function, say, the statement can reflect question or command function in different contexts. [8] I wonder if you have the time. (idem.) [9] So you are from France? (idem.) [10] I wouldn't take the job if I were you (idem.) We call this phenomenon of mood variation the mood metaphor, which transfers from one mood to another. Mood metaphor reflects the variation of the speech function. Clearly, in the mood metaphor, the relationship between grammatical categories and semantic features is not one to one; a tone also reflects two or more speech functions. The effect of metaphor is a combination of two language functions, such as the example [8] and [9] are the statements used to ask questions. In both cases, the statement reflects the tone of question feature through the combination of the statement of significance and meaning of question. Therefore, the mood metaphor extends language function on the semantic level. The language in the English newspapers is more formal, and the traditional grammar such as declarative sentences, interrogative and imperative sentences are usually used to achieve the statement in the form of congruence. In the news headline, you can find some examples of mood metaphors, in particular, a question and exclamation. Because this kind of headline can attract the attention of the readers and arouse their interest in the reports. However, question is rarely seen in the body. This feature has the direct relation with the objectivity of the news. The mood metaphor has more or less the subjective tone of the reporter, may leads the readers doubt on the facticity and the objectivity of the news. But it does not mean that the function of mood metaphor can be ignored in the news discourse, the main function reflects in the judge and cohesion of the discourse.
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and compresses its modality meaning, thus changes the structure of the rhyme and theme and plays the role of cohesion. As the News English discourse contains a wealth of information, coherence between sentences is very important; the cohesion function of metaphor has its own unique value. At present, the discourse theory of metaphor is not put forward by the clear theory, so this study also needs further exploration. The development of discourse theory of metaphor will be beneficial for the understanding of the news discourse.
5. Conclusion
News is a style which requires highly accuracy of the fact, the figures of speech which make abstract things concrete and arouse the reader's imagination. The purposes of English newspapers determine the unique stylistic characteristics of English newspapers, among which metaphor is the main feature of news style. Articles tend to emphasize the key news in the reports, tend to use a verb, a noun or noun phrase to achieve the News Cohesion and tend to adjust the relationship of the subject-predicate so as to make the news more objective and true through the metaphor of modality. In understanding the metaphor of news English discourse, we should on one hand correctly handle the original figurative meaning and understand the background of the language features; on the other hand, we should comprehend and analyze the discourse correctly from the whole text and the perspective of metaphor theory. Metaphor has been the most significant feature in News English, the degree of difficulty of discourse has been closely connected with the number of grammatical metaphors. The more grammatical metaphors an article has, the more meanings are show in the article, and accordingly, the article will be more difficult to understand. The nominalization metaphor plays an important role in the consistency of an article, while the conceptual metaphor can make the article more objective. In short, in the newspapers, there are lots of metaphors of modality and mood metaphor. The formers main function is to accurately reflect the speaker's point of view of a proposition and to express related emotion; the latters feature is mainly used to play the role of judgment and cohesion. Along with other means of grammatical metaphor, they constitute an indispensable English expression styles in the newspaper articles and so it plays an essential role of expression. It is necessary to study the metaphor and it is worthwhile to realize, understand and analyze the function of grammatical metaphor theory in the news English discourse.
References
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[2] Fan, Wenfang, Cohesive functions of nominalization in English discourse[J]. Foreign Language Study, 1999, (11). [3] Fan, Wenfang, English Metaphors of Mood [J]. Foreign Languages, 2000, No. 4. [4]Grube+G,M,A,Aristotle Publishing, 1983, [5]Halliday, M , A , K , An Introduction to Functional Grammar [M] , London - Edward Arnold(Publishers)Limited+1985/1994, [6]Halliday+ M, A, K, + Ruquaiya Hasan, Cohesion in English [M], BeijingForeign Language Teaching and Research Press.London-Edward Arnold(Publishers)Limited+2000, [7]Halliday, M, A, K and Christian, M, I, M, Matthiessen, An Introduction to Function Grammar (the third edition) [M],London-Edward Arnold Limited,2004, [8] Hawkes+Terence!Metaphor [M],New York-Matheune /Co,Ltd+1980, [9] Hu, Zhuanglin, Zhu, Yongsheng, An Introduction to Functional Grammar [M]. Peking University Press, 2005. [10] Hu, Zhuanglin, Reviews of grammatical metaphor of Halliday model [J]. Foreign Language Teaching and Research, 2000, (3). [11] Li, Fagen, Functions and translations of small aphorisms [J]. Foreign Languages and Foreign Langusge Teaching, 2004. [12] Lin, Min, The metaphor in news headlines viewed from the systematical function [J]. Language Arts Education Research, 2008. [13] Liu Chengyu, The style value of grammatical metaphor [J]. Modern Foreign Language, 2003. [14]Thompson, G. Introduction Functional Grammar [M]. Beijing: Foreign Language Teaching and Research Press, 2000, [15] Yan, Shiqing, Exploration of the history of metaphor theory [J]. Foreign Languages, 1995, (5) :27-3. [16] Zhou, Dajun, Metaphors of modality in English and the explanatory power of discourse [J]. Sichuan International Studies University Transaction, 2003, No. 6. [17] Zhou, Xueyi, Textbook of English and American newspaper articles reading (Second Edition) [M]. Beijing: Beijing University Press, 2001 On Poetry and Style[M],Indianapolis-Bobbs Merrill Educational
Contact: Jianqing Wu, an associate professor of Linguistics, mail box 502, Qingdao University of Science and Technology, email: wjq58@hotmail.com; Liyuan Tang, Master student of Grade 2010, SFL in QUST, email: qkdyuan@163.com Note: This paper is sponsored by Humanities and Social Sciences Fund of Qingdao of University of Science and Technology in 2009, the project numbered 09XB08.
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