Exploring Grammatical Metaphor: Insights from Systemic Functional Linguistics

This book explores the fascinating world of grammatical metaphor through the lens of systemic functional linguistics. It provides a valuable toolkit for understanding how grammatical metaphor can expand the potential for meaning and serve as a key resource for bridging linguistic and cultural gaps in different contexts.

Grammatical metaphor is presented not merely as a linguistic feature, but as a powerful tool that transforms meaning across grammatical categories. This book examines how this phenomenon of “transcategorisation” works, showing how it shifts and enriches the representation of meaning. Using the framework of systemic functional linguistics, the book emphasises the dynamic relationship between language systems and the texts they produce. Combining theory and practice, it investigates the wide-ranging applications of grammatical metaphor in fields such as contrastive linguistics, discourse analysis, and translation studies. Readers will discover how grammatical metaphor increases the flexibility and depth of language, enabling speakers and writers to achieve more nuanced and effective communication.

This book will be essential reading for linguists, language learners, translators, and intercultural communicators. Whether you’re a researcher or a practitioner, this book will inspire new ways of thinking about language and communication.

Zhong Yang is a professor at Northeast Normal University, with research interests in systemic functional linguistics, cognitive linguistics, and language education. He has authored four books in collaboration: Text, Function and Cognition (2003), A Multi-Perspective Study of Language (2018), An Introduction to Linguistics (2022), and Pragmatics. Cognition. Communication (1998). Additionally, he has published over 100 articles on topics including language teaching, theoretical linguistics, and translation.