Abstract :
From a Systemic Functional perspective, Grammatical Metaphor (GM) as is
taken to be a chief driving force in the discourse of different genres, an important
adult language machinery for ideational meanings to be semantically crossmapped
and realized through a different form in the stratum of the lexicogrammar,
in order to convey changed meanings and tinker with the discursive
flow and development of text in real time, mainly through nominalization of
adjectives and verbs. Using a number of established works of the English novel
as data, this study draws upon the author’s previous model for the categories of
GM used in modern prose fiction, with the main focus placed on one of the six
categories, Prepositional GM (PGM). PGM figures with a very high frequency in
fiction and occurs when a GM is preceded by a preposition. This study finds that
the language of prose fiction in English deploys some of these PGMsin either of
two different meaning sof the adverbial, varying according to context. Again, as
seen to be the hallmark of GM by many, GM is found to open up vast ideational
meaning potentials in the semantics stratum, from which the lexico-grammar
makes choices according to context and intended meaning. As argued elsewhere
in the literature and here, and as backed up by the author’s own experience of the
advanced teaching of writing and reading, broadened understanding of GM is a
critically important component to writing instruction and its effectiveness, as
seen in the large-scale horizons and agendas for effective teaching of English as
a Foreign Language in Iran and beyond.
Keywords :
systemic functional linguistics , grammatical metaphor , prose fiction , prepositional grammatical metaphor , advanced reading and writing instruction
