Teaching Grammatical Metaphor: Designing Pedagogical Interventions

Abstract

This book reports on an action research project that spanned a period of more than three years. The aims of this project were twofold; firstly, the project aimed to establish an approach to teaching grammatical metaphor (GM hereafter), which is one of the fundamental characteristics of academic registers as suggested by Halliday (1985a). Secondly, it aims to explore the role of online feedback in helping students improve their GM use. ... This book is based on my PhD dissertation. It recounts a story regarding designing and implementing pedagogical interventions to teach grammatical metaphor (GM). The motivation for converting my PhD dissertation mainly resulted from the need to provide a discussion of the evolution of GM theory. GM has been theorized based on two notions in Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) theory: stratal tension and semantic junction. While the stratal tension notion helped researchers develop a framework theorizing GM based on interstratal tension between discourse semantics and lexicogrammar; the notion of semantic junction was helpful in theorizing GM based on intra-stratal junction between elemental semantic categories. Although these two notions possess fundamental differences, they are also closely related. The theorization of GM drawing on the notion of semantic junction might be regarded as a transference/transcategorization of GM instances suggested by the model that draws on the notion of stratal tension. In order to clarify the theoretical orientations to GM research, this book provides a detailed recount of the evolution of GM theory.