Grammatical metaphor – packaging of information at the clause level
A literature review, as an academic written genre, is a survey of scholarly works relevant to a particular issue, theory, or research area the writer is interested in exploring and gives a description, summary or critical remarks. As a genre with an academic and specialised nature, with the subject matter moving away from sequences of experience and events towards more abstract knowledge and ideas, the written language should be technical, scientific and sophisticated, not only in terms of style, structure and format, but also the provision of “resources for the accumulation, compacting, foregrounding and background of information and evidence so that the argument can move forward” (Christie & Derewianka, 2008, p.25). Such a formulation for packaging information is called “grammatical metaphor”, as proposed by Halliday and Matthiessen (1999).
Recent studies pointed out the problems students encountered writing academic genres, with comments on their wording (conciseness), informality (register) (Schleppegrell, 2004), interference by second language and inappropriateness use of lexicogrammatical resources to construe meanings (Chen & Foley, 2004). Students are often required to rephrase or use a more appropriate style in such written works. In view of this, control and management of the use of grammatical metaphor in academic text is essential in constructing a concise and formal written work. A proficient writer would deploy grammatical metaphor resources to present his/her idea. Being incapable of rank shifting, a novice writer, instead, would choose a more congruent way of relating events with causal links and narrate in a more “spoken style” which is less valued than the incongruent, “sounding written” style (Schleppegrell, 2004, p. 178).
Next section will include a detailed explanation on the formation of grammatical metaphor, as well as exemplification of the use of the incongruent writing style with grammatical metaphor.
Grammatical metaphor is the compaction of a clause (“literal”) into a nominal group (“metaphorical”) so that events, originally separated in clauses, can be condensed into one single action. Take for an example from a citation found in the literature review (Table 1), a single clause with long nominal groups can be broken down into three clauses, which relationship is connected in terms of adverbials of condition (“if” clause) and place (“where” clause). In earlier schooling, literal or “congruent” construal of experience is common (Christie, 1998, 2002 in Christie & Derewianka, 2008); as students turn into late childhood and adolescence, incongruent grammatical formulations start to emerge in their writing, with the use of embedded clauses (e.g. relative clauses, participles) and turning a full clause to nominal group. Successful writers are capable of managing grammatical metaphor in their written work, especially in exposition and argumentation, in which a more sophisticated and technical register is required.
Metaphorical: information packed into one clause |
Literal (or “congruent”): information unpacked into clauses |
Furthermore, reliance on scripted spoken texts retards students’ ability to interact in the unscripted world of conversation outside the classroom (Burns 2001). |
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Table 1. Grammatical metaphor: packing and unpacking information
Although both the literal and metaphorical instances mean the same, they serve different functions. The literal instance portrays a sequence of concrete experience such as an observation, and narrates as a matter of fact. Meanwhile, the metaphorical notion is the concentrated experience into “a general notion of ‘abstraction’” (Ravelli, 2004, p. 117), refined into an understanding of knowledge or ideas. In other words, grammatical metaphor is the naming of processes and sequences, and “one of the most important ways to technicalise” (ibid, p.117).
Apart from making the written text look sophisticated and technical, grammatical metaphor also acts as a means to foreground and background the body of text. High lexical density in the form of grammatical metaphor at the position of higher level Themes and News serves as a point of departure to further develop the text and to accumulate and distil information (Please refer to Textual Organisation for more details on using grammatical metaphor to facilitate the periodicity of discourse)
A typical feature of grammatical metaphor in academic written discourse is nominalisation, meaning the grammatical categories are shifted to nouns from various lexicogrammar. Nominalisation involves change in wording (Example 2) on certain occasions as well (“quickly” to “rate”). Table 2 provides more examples extracted from a literature review on the grammatical shift where grammatical metaphor is deployed.
| Congruent | Metaphorical | |
| (1) | The findings interested (verb) many researchers. | Many researchers’ interest (noun) in the findings… |
| (2) | The solution in the test tube changes (verb) colour quickly (adverb). | The rate (noun) of the colour change (noun) of the solution in the test tube is high. |
| Grammatical Shift | Congruent alternatives | Metaphorical: in samples |
| adjective to noun | I’ve already highlighted the observation that the students were enthusiastic about using the culturally bound DMs in their prescribed texts… |
I've already highlighted the enthusiasm with which students use the culturally bound DMs in their prescribed texts… |
| verb to noun | Furthermore, as students rely on scripted spoken texts, they become less able to interact outside the classroom, where people in the world converse without a script (Burns 2001). |
Furthermore, reliance on scripted spoken texts retards students’ ability to interact in theunscripted world of conversation outside the classroom (Burns 2001). |
| adverb/prepositional phrase to noun | We see that the above text does not present the realistic situation authentically. |
We see that above extract lacks authenticity… |
| conjunction to noun | Real social discourse is unpredictable and dynamic because it is “moment by moment creations” (Hughes and McCarthy cited in Burns 2001). |
Real social discourse is unpredictable and dynamic and a result of “moment by moment creations” (Hughes and McCarthy cited in Burns 2001). |
Table 2. Grammatical shift as a result of nominalisation
The congruent realisations from the sample literature review can be reworked into metaphorical alternatives as suggested in Table 3. However, academic writing does not necessitate deploying grammatical metaphor in every clause since grammatical metaphor is not simply a style to show the sophistication of writing techniques. Instead, it is deployed for textual organisation as well as distancing from narrating events from an individual perspective while moving towards a general and objective position to lay out abstract knowledge and ideas.
| Grammatical Shift | Congruent | Metaphorical |
| adjective to noun | While no doubt more manageable, using prescribed texts does not provide students the opportunity to extend their spoken repertoire... | The manageability of the use of prescribed texts ceases to provide students the opportunity to extend their spoken repertoire |
| verb to noun | When the dialogue was recreated by the students, unfortunately, much of the humour was negated by the unnatural chunking of the text. | Much of the humour in the recreation of the dialogue by the students was negated by the unnatural chunking of the text. |
| adverb/prepositional phrase to noun | It is also an integral factor motivating students to expand their repertoire of communicative skills as they seek to better express their feelings, values and indeed personalities in L2 situations. | It is also an integral factor motivating students to expand their repertoire of communicative skills for the improvement of expressing their feelings, values and indeed personalities in L2 situations. |
| conjunction to noun | Such the students’ reproduction of the text lacked emotional insight and therefore the full meaning of the text could not be realized. | The lack of emotional insight in the students’ reproduction of the text becomes the cause of the failure of realisation of its full meaning. |
Table 3. Metaphorical alternatives derived from the sample literature review
To end this chapter, it must be emphasised that not all nominalisation can act as grammatical metaphor. Nominalisation must be able to be unpacked into congruent realisations in order to be treated as grammatical metaphor, or to quote Christie and Derewianka (2008), that “[t]he probe for grammatical metaphor is to ask whether it is possible, in this particular instance, to unpack the nominalisation to a plausible, congruent alternative (p. 26). Take the following Example 3 into consideration, where “appreciation” is simply a nominalisation of “to appreciate”. In Example (4), it is possible for the nominal group with “appreciation” to be construed as a more “spoken” form in terms of congruent clauses. The “literal” and the “metaphorical” being interchangeable, the writer has opted for the metaphorical instead of the literal as a mean to pack as much information as possible in a clause.
| (3) | This is a sincere appreciation. |
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Metaphorical |
Congruent |
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| (4) | It is argued that an appreciation of the creative patterns of language in a variety of interpersonal contexts fosters greater language and even literary appreciation and understanding (Carter and McCarthy 2004). |
Carter and McCarthy (2004) argued || that, || when students appreciate the creative patterns of language in variety of interpersonal contexts, || they can in turn appreciate and understanding language and literature more. |
Chen, Y. & Foley, J.A. (2004). Problems with the metaphorical reconstrual of meaning in Chinese EFL leaners’ expositions. In R.J. Ravelli & R.A. Ellis (Eds.), Analysing Academic Writing: Contextualized Frameworks (p. 190-209). London: Continuum.
Christie, F. & Derewianka, B. (2008). School Discourse. London: Continuum.
Halliday, M.A.K. & Matthiessen, C.M.I.M. (1999). Construing Experience Through Meaning. A Language-Based Approach to Cognition. London and New York: Cassell.
Ravelli, R.J. (2004). Signalling the organization of written texts: hyper-Themes in management and history essays. In R.J. Ravelli & R.A. Ellis (Eds.), Analysing Academic Writing: Contextualized Frameworks (p. 104-130). London: Continuum.
Ravelli, R.J. & Ellis, R.A. (2004). Analysing Academic Writing: Contextualized Frameworks. London: Continuum.
Schleppegrell, M.J. (2004) Technical writing in a second language: the role of grammatical metaphor. In R.J. Ravelli & R.A. Ellis (Eds.), Analysing Academic Writing: Contextualized Frameworks (p. 172-189). London: Continuum.