Journals Information
Linguistics and Literature Studies Vol. 12(3), pp. 29 - 45
DOI: 10.13189/lls.2024.120302
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Enhancing Academic Discourse: Features and Functions of Causal Logical Grammatical Metaphors
Yiyi Xie , Yi Zhang *
School of Foreign Studies, Northwestern Polytechnical University, China
ABSTRACT
This study aims to analyze the distributional features of causal logical grammatical metaphors and their functions in academic discourse construction based on Halliday's theory of grammatical metaphor and Martin's classification of logical grammatical metaphor. The research corpus consists of 30 journal articles randomly selected from The Modern Language Journal between 2018 and 2022. The results showed that: (a) There were a total of 1,005 causal logical grammatical metaphor instances, among which the dominant type was conjunction-as-thing causal logical grammatical metaphor (41.69%); conjunction-as-process (28.16%) was the second dominant type; the types of conjunction-as-quality (16.42%) and conjunction-as-circumstance (13.73%) were not commonly used; and there was a significant difference among different types of causal logical grammatical metaphors (p = .000 < .05). (b) The reasons for the distributional features include the preference of academic discourse for static and immobile language, the extensive use of the 鈥渇avorite clause type鈥� in English scientific writing, the lowest degree of metaphoricity of conjunction-as-circumstance and modifying as the primary function of conjunction-as-quality. (c) Causal logical grammatical metaphors have the functions of making academic language more accurate, rigorous, condensed, and comprehensible, and reducing grammatical complexity and repetition of causal events.
KEYWORDS
Logical Grammatical Metaphor, Causal Relationship, Linguistic Academic Discourse
Cite This Paper in IEEE or APA Citation Styles
(a). IEEE Format:
[1] Yiyi Xie , Yi Zhang , "Enhancing Academic Discourse: Features and Functions of Causal Logical Grammatical Metaphors," Linguistics and Literature Studies, Vol. 12, No. 3, pp. 29 - 45, 2024. DOI: 10.13189/lls.2024.120302.
(b). APA Format:
Yiyi Xie , Yi Zhang (2024). Enhancing Academic Discourse: Features and Functions of Causal Logical Grammatical Metaphors. Linguistics and Literature Studies, 12(3), 29 - 45. DOI: 10.13189/lls.2024.120302.