Grammatical metaphor in English pharmaceutical discourse

Grammatical metaphor in English pharmaceutical discourse Vũ Thị Mẫu University of Languages and International Studies M.A Thesis: English Linguistics, Code: 60 22 15 Supervisor : Đỗ Tuấn Minh, Ph.D Year of graduation: 2012 Abstract: The study is an attempt to explore grammatical metaphor in English pharmaceutical discourse from the systemic functional perspective. The framework adopted for the analysis is developed by Halliday (1985 & 1994), Halliday & Martin (1993), Thompson (1996), Martin & Veel (1998), Halliday & Matthiessen (1999 & 2004), Martin & Rose (2007) and other systemicists. The focus is to find out the nature of grammatical metaphor, its exploitation in the discourses concerned and some linguistic features of English pharmaceutical discourse. Taking pharmaceutical language as the baseline, the analysis aims to verify the universality of grammatical metaphor and uncover its functions in the discourse. The descriptive, explanatory, statistical, analytical and corpus-based methods are applied in this investigation. The findings confirm that grammatical metaphor is used densely in English pharmaceutical discourse and there is a close relationship between the use of grammatical metaphor and the creation of the discourse. The study is organized into three parts. Part one - the Introduction - presents the rationale for the study, sets up the aims, scope of the study and research questions and brings about study methods, data collection and format. Part two - the Development - consists of three chapters, which focus on systemic functional grammar, grammatical metaphor, its use in English pharmaceutical discourse and some linguistic properties of pharmaceutical English. Chapter 1 provides theoretical backgrounds for the thesis by giving out an overview of systemic functional theory which centers on the notion of context, strata, metafunctions and nominal group. Then, Chapter 2 attempts to give an insight into grammatical metaphor as framework for the study. Chapter 3 investigates features of English pharmaceutical discourse, explores and discusses the use of grammatical metaphor, including its frequency and types in selected discourse. Part three - the Coda - is the conclusion of the study which sums up the issues addressed in the study and provides implications for teaching and translating English pharmaceutical discourse, limitations of the present study and suggestions for further research. Keywords: Tiếng Anh; Ngữ pháp; Ẩn dụ; Văn bản Content PART 1: INTRODUCTION 1. Rationale 1.1. Why English pharmaceutical discourse? The emphasis on pharmacy in the recent decades has given rise to the growth of pharmaceutical literature and most pharmaceutical papers are only available in English. Also, making sense of English pharmaceutical discourse (EPD for short) is not an easy task for readers and learners as it requires both linguistic and subject knowledge. Besides, EPD has been always of my personal interest and it is apparent to me that EPD is extremely complicated and need studying. Although some studies have investigated scientific discourse, EPD may present dissimilar characteristics. My own EPD study has also found evidence for the claim of complexity in this particular genre. 1.2. Why systemic functional grammar? Systemic functional grammar (SFG afterward) concerns how the grammar serves as a resource for making and exchanging meanings. Thus, good SFG can help language teachers be more effective teachers. In addition, some studies have already studied medico-pharmaceutical language; however, these papers are simply based on the structural approach and not enough research has been carried out to investigate lexicogrammatical features of EPD. Thus, an analysis of EPD which uses SFG as framework helps fill the gap in pharmaceutical literature. 1.3. Why grammatical metaphor? Grammatical metaphor (hereafter abbreviated GM) has not attracted enough attention paid by Vietnamese researchers. GM appears frequently in the EPD and the its use contributes to the complexity and ambiguity of the discourse. 2. Aims of the study The ultimate aim of the study is to make an inquiry into the nature of GM and to examine its use, including its frequency and types, in EPD. The study also attempts to answer the question of how writers of this genre fully exploit the potential of a natural process of linguistic change to meet their scientific goals. 3. Research questions The study aims to give answer to the following research questions: 1. What is the nature of GM? 2. What are linguistic features of EPD? 3. Which types of GM are used in EPD? 4. What is the ratio of GM (number of GM instances per clause) in EPD? 4. Scope of the study This study investigates GM and linguistics features of seven discourses in three English specialized advanced books for pharmacists and pharmacist students. It is predicted that this kind of discourse exploits many instances of GM. The graphs, tables, figures, diagrams, imagines, photographs, and etc. included in those discourses are ignored and so are the titles and headings. Special emphasis is put into analyzing ideational GM, which plays the key role in construing meaning in the discourse. This study is confined to an analysis at clause level of 132 clauses concerned. 5. Methods and data of the study The methods used are mainly descriptive, explanatory, statistical, analytical and corpus- based. The study begins with a phenomenon and seeks to describe, explain and analyze it. Then, instances of linguistic patterns and GMs are listed, numbered and analyzed using the framework. Necessary comments and suggestions are given. Also, the research is based on a corpus, seven discourses from three pharmaceutical advanced books, namely, Pharmacology and the nursing process, Levine‟s pharmacology: Drug actions and reactions, Basic and clinical pharmacology, and Goodman and Gilman‟s: The pharmacological basis of therapeutics. They are selected based on criteria of authenticity, relevance, style, topic variation and up-to-date documents. 6. Format of the study The paper is divided into three main parts. The Introduction presents the background for the research, including rationale, aims, scope, research questions, study methods, data collection and organization. The Development is subdivided into three chapters. First, Chapter 1 provides an overview of SFG theory. Next, Chapter 2 gives an insight to GM as framework for the study. Last, Chapter 3 studies linguistic features of EPD and explores and discusses the use of GM as well as explains how it is exploited in creating EPD. The Conclusion sums up the issues addressed in the study and provides implications for teaching and translating pharmaceutical Englsih, limitations of the present study and suggestions for further research. PART 2: DEVELOPMENT CHAPTER 1 THEORETICAL BACKGROUND 1.1. Introduction Within the framework, this chapter deals with some important concepts. First, the relationship between language and social context will be examined. This is followed by an exploration of the three metafunctions, and nominal group. 1.2. Language and social context „[SFG] is oriented to the description of language as a resource for meaning rather than as a system of rules‟ (Halliday & Martin, 1993: 22) and it only makes sense when placed in context. SFG treats language and social context as complementary levels of semiotics. There are three strata of language: semantics, lexicogrammar and phonology. Also, context is divided into genre (context of culture) and register (context of situation). Register is characterized by three parameters: field, tenor and mode. 1.3. Metafunctions The ideational metafunction, which includes experiential and logical, reflects the field parameter. It is realized by TRANSITIVITY system with six process types: material, mental, relational, verbal, existential and behavioral process. The logical refers to „some general organizing relations expressed‟, for instance, paratactic versus hypotactic organization. The interpersonal metafunction is reflected by tenor. Language is used to enable us to participate in communicative acts with other people, to take on roles and to express and understand feelings, attitude and judgments. One of its major grammatical systems is MOOD – the grammaticalization of speech function. The textual metafunction enables the speaker or writer to construct texts. It is related to establishing coherence and cohesion in discourses. It is realized by the system of THEME. 1.4. Nominal group The nominal group is a powerful resource for making meaning. The experiential structure of the nominal group consists of Deictic, Numerative, Epithet, Classifier and Thing and there is a category within the nominal group which follows the Thing, the Qualifier. 1.5. Concluding remarks The chapter confirms that language has to be put in context and context is realized by the content level of language and the content is given form in the expression level. The semantic level is described basing on ideational, interpersonal and textual meaning and each meaning is related to a specific context or register variable. Nominal group is central to make meaning in English, and it has the potential for organizing a large quantity of lexical material into functional configurations. CHAPTER 2 THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK OF GRAMMATICAL METAPHOR IN ENGLISH 2.1. Introduction The aim of this chapter is to figure out a theoretical framework for analyzing GM in EPD by examining the concept of GM and its types. We will provide the definition of GM and different views on its classification. 2.2. What is grammatical metaphor? Halliday divides different grammatical forms with the same meaning into congruent and metaphorical variant and GM is the metaphorical expression of a meaning. Congruently, people, places and things are realized nominally, actions are realized verbally, logical relations of time and consequence are realized conjunctively. According to Halliday & Matthiessen (1999), there exist different components which can map onto each other in one way or another. Mapping of components The solid lines indicate the usual mapping between the components in the two strata and the dotted lines indicate the unusual mapping between the components. The two versions are said to be agnate but are different ways of expressing the „same‟ meaning. And we should bear in mind that: (1) (in)congruence is always a matter of degree, (2) expression and meaning cannot be separated since the expression is the meaning, and (3) more metaphorical wordings are inherently neither better nor worse than more congruent ones (Halliday, 1994: 342). Besides, lexical metaphor and GM are not two different phenomena; they are both aspects of the same general metaphorical strategy, but seen from different perspectives (Halliday, 1994: 341). While lexical metaphor is looked at „from below‟ as variation in the meaning of a given expression, GM is seen „from above‟, examining variation in the expression of a given meaning (Halliday, 1994: 342). Also, „lexical selection is just one aspect of lexicogrammatical selection‟. 2.3. Classification of grammatical metaphor 2.3.1. Ideational metaphor Ideational GM is subdivided into logical and experiential one, in which the former is considered metaphor of transitivity and the latter of conjunction. Regarding logical GM, Martin & Rose (2007: 140) states that it „is used to reconstrue logical relations between figures as if they were relations between elements within figures‟. In experiential GM, elements of figures are reconstrued as if they were other kinds of elements. Thompson (1996: 167) argues that „this type of [GM] plays a key role because it involves a realignment of all the other elements of the message‟. 2.3.2. Interpersonal metaphor The function of modality is expressed not only by modal verbs, but also by nouns, adjectives, adverbs and prepositional phrases and its corresponding structures. Interpersonal GM of modality has its characteristic of subjective and objective. The other type of interpersonal GM is GM of mood. According to Halliday (1994: 363), mood expresses the speech functions of statement, question, offer and command. Statements are encoded by the declarative, questions by the interrogative, and commands by the imperative clauses. In metaphor of mood, one speech function can be realized by various moods and one mood can realize various speech functions. 2.3.3. Textual metaphor Thompson (1996: 176) includes textual GM because he assumes that the presence of GM can be recognized by the need for a double transitivity analysis. These are thematic equatives and predicated theme. 2.4. Concluding remarks In short, we have provided an investigation into GM in English with the emphasis on its nature and classification. CHAPTER 3 GRAMMATICAL METAPHOR IN ENGLISH PHARMACEUTICAL DISCOURSE 3.1. Introduction This chapter attempts to look at how GM is used in EPD and figure out some linguistic features of these discourses. 3.2. The authors and the chosen discourses The authors are all specialists in medicine and pharmacy, natives of English, live and work in the USA. The seven discourses are used for extending, transmitting and exploring knowledge in pharmacy (FIELD), are addressed to specialists and pharmacist students (TENOR), and uses graphic channel and are written academically (MODE). 3.3. Linguistic features of pharmaceutical discourse 3.3.1. Lexical features of pharmaceutical discourse Language of pharmacy aims at constructing pharmaceutical knowledge in which pharmaceutical taxonomies are considered to play a key role to differentiate pharmaceutical discourse from others. The use of pharmaceutical terminology also causes a great difficulty for non-specific readers. These terms carry massive information and readers need background and pharmacy knowledge to comprehend them. Lexical density is considered an important characteristic of EPD. There are totally 1086 lexical items in the 1751 running words in the selected discourses; thus, the lexical density is 62.02%. Also, most of the lexemes fall into nominal group. 3.3.2. Grammatical features of pharmaceutical discourse Firstly, the fact that 132 clauses (excluding rank-shifted clauses within these 132 clauses) in the seven discourses make up 79 clause complexes means the number of clauses per clause complex is 1.67. The EPDs are involved in many hypotactic and paratactic relations in which expansion outweights projection. Distribution of types of logico-semantic relation in EPD These statistics suggest that pharmaceutical authors tend to explain, describe and justify their experiments or study projects rather than to quote or restate ideas of others. Secondly, many clauses under investigation are non-agentive ones. Middle and passive clauses are used to enhance the objectivity of the EPD. Thirdly, the declarative mood is fully mobilized. None of 132 clauses is imperative or interrogative. All 123 clauses with finite verbs are declarations. Fourthly, material process is most frequently used in the EPD; and relational process is also used at a high rate. The authors try to mention actions done by the doctors, pharmacists, nurses, and patients and moves taken by agents and drugs as well as to identify or define things such as drug level, effects of drugs, and etc. Distribution of types of process in EPD Fifthly, 118 themes are topical ones (only 4 of them are marked), 27 textual themes and only one interpersonal theme can be found in the seven discourses. Distribution of types of theme in EPD The authors try to make chain of arguments in their writings; and they do not intend to create personal relationships with the receivers. The textual themes (conjunctions) are used to connect the ideas. Sixthly, some sentences in EPD cause ambiguity for the readers. The ambiguity is caused mostly by the nominalizations. A great deal of semantic information is lost when clausal expressions are replaced by nominal ones. Finally, the high lexical density and ambiguity are by-products of GM, a substitution of one grammatical class, or one grammatical structure, by another. GM involves mainly nominalizing process. 3.4. Nominalization and English pharmaceutical discourse The EPDs contain 274 instances of nominalizations (156 occurrences per 1,000 words). This high incidence is a result of conceptual complexity of the EPD. The pharmaceutical writing sounds more abstract and formal, therefore, more difficult to understand, especially for those who do not have the required knowledge of the subject matter. Nominalizations increases the objectivity, chains of reasoning and pharmaceutical taxonomies and terminologies of EPD. 3.5. Frequency of use of grammatical metaphor in English pharmaceutical discourse The numbers of clauses, clauses with GM and instances of GM are shown below: Number of clauses Number of clauses with GM Number of instances of GM 132 126 546 Each of 132 clause is read closely and instances of GM are identified with reference to the framework listed in Chapter 2 and the table suggested by Halliday & Mathiessen (1999). Frequency Figures Percentage of clauses with GM 95.45% (126/132 clauses) GMC ratio 4.14 (546/132 clauses) Frequency of use of GM in EPD It was shown that GM was used frequently in EPDs. All EPDs contain GMs and a large percentage of the clauses contain GM. Moreover, the GMC ratio is extremely large. That means the authors show a strong tendency to use GM in constructing their discourse. 3.6. Types of grammatical metaphor in English pharmaceutical discourse 3.6.1. Ideational metaphor We adapt the table of class shift by Matthiessen in Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 247). Type Congruence Semantic Type Metaphorical Class shift Example 1 quality thing adjective - noun unstable - instability quick(ly) - speed 2.i process event of process verb - noun transform -transformation 2.ii aspect of phase of process tense/phase verb (adverb) - noun will/going to - prospect try to - attempt 2.iii modality of process modality verb (adverb) - noun can/could - possibility, potential 3 circumstance [minor process] preposition - noun with - accompaniment 4 relator conjunction - noun so - cause, proof if - condition 5.i process event of process quality verb - adjective [poverty] is increasing -increasing [poverty] 5.ii aspect or phase of process tense/phase verb (adverb) - adjective begin - initial 5.iii modality of process modality of verb (adverb) - adjective [always] will - constant 6.i circumstance manner adverb - adjective [acted] brilliantly -brilliant [acting] 6.ii time, place, etc. prepositional phrase - adjective [argued] for a long time - lengthy [argument] 6.iii time, place, etc. prepositional phrase - noun modifier [cracks] on the surface - surface [cracks] 7 relator conjunction - adjective before - previous 8 circumstance [minor process] process be/go + preposition - verb be about - concern be instead of - replace 9 relator conjunction - verb and - complement; then - follow; so - lead to 10 relator [minor process] circumstance conjunction - prepositional (phrase) when - in times of ; so - as a result 11 0 thing 0 - noun [x] - the fact of [x] 12 0 process 0 - verb [x] - [x] occurs/exists have/do [x] started [to survey] - started [a survey] 13 thing modifier (of thing) noun - [various] engine [fails] - engine [failure]; glass [fractures] – [the fracture] of glass; cabinet [decided] - government‟s [decision] Types of grammatical metaphor (Adapted from Halliday & Matthiessen, 1999: 247) It is shown that the overall trend of GM is shifting toward „thing‟ or „thinginess‟. After analyzing the EPDs based on the table of GM types above, we have found that there are major and minor types that the authors used in their discourses. Types of Ideational Metaphor Number of instances Percentage (%) 1 96 17.81 2 160 29.68 3 6 01.11 4 2 00.37 5 28 05.20 6 62 11.50 7 5 00.93 8 1 00.19 9 9 01.67 10 10 01.86 11 2 00.37 12 30 05.57 13 128 23.74 Total 539 100% Types of ideational metaphor in EPD Distribution of types of ideational GM in EPD As we can see, all 13 types appear in EPD; however, Type 2 (process  thing), 13 (thing  modifier of thing), 1 (quality  thing), 6 (circumstance  quality), 12 (0  process) and 5 (process  quality) in turn appears with highest frequency (major types), which vitally contribute to the developing of structure and style of EPD. That the three types of GM used most frequently are Type 2, Type 13 and Type 1 which account for 71.23% suggests that the authors tend to condense the information which would otherwise be expressed congruently with a clause (or even clause complex) into a nominal group. The writings sound less imposing and more objective. GM brings about a loss in experiential meaning, leaving the interpretation of the metaphorical element and thus the whole messages open to a number of possibilities. This suggest that EPD is quite complicated and cognitively demanding. Along with Type 2, 13 and 1, Type 6, 12 and 5 also play an important role in the distribution of GM in EPD. Besides, other types of GM still exist in the EPD with a relatively low rate. In a nutshell, ideational GM, especially experiential one, plays the key role in mapping pharmaceutical concepts. A great deal of consequences, figures and elements is downranked to become smaller rank, mostly nouns and nominal groups. 3.6.2. Interpersonal metaphor Regarding metaphor of mood, the author of this thesis could find out just 7 instances of GM of mood in total 546 GMs. These clauses are all in declarative forms but they function as commands. The reason is that the selected EPDs are all in the textbooks for pharmacists, doctors, nurses and pharmacist students; thus, their main function is to give information, facts, and instructions and experiments. The authors of those discourses find no need to ask for information or get response from the readers; and these EPDs are published world-wide, so they must meet the high requirements of publishing and science. Similarly, metaphors of modality in EPDs are rarely found. These are the two instances of this category of GM that the researcher could figure out in which the metaphorical modes of expression disappear from transitivity. The nominalizing technique in these extracts once more increases the objectivity of the discourses. The authors of PDs seem to not exploit this strategy in their writings to maximize the scientific value of their works. 3.6.3. Textual metaphor None of textual GMs is shown. Almost the themes in those EPDs are topical ones and the rhemes in previous clauses become themes in the followings naturally. The EPD authors seem to forget to make them marked by the use of thematic equatives and predicated themes. This finding suggests that the EPDs mainly focus on presenting information. 3.7. Concluding remarks This chapter attempts to find out some main linguistic characteristics of EPD and to look at how GM is used in EPD, and its functions in developing and structuring the EPD. PART 3: CONCLUSION 1. Reiteration The study starts with the description of the theoretical background of the most important issues related to GM: context, strata, metafunctions, nominal group, nominalization and (in)congruence. Next, the framework for analyzing GM in EPD consists of ideational, interpersonal and textual GM and thirteen small types of GM. Then comes a description together with some statistics, explanation and discussion of major characteristics of EPD. After finding out features of EPD, an analysis of GM in the corpus has been conducted. Firstly, the EPD authors use GM in a large proportion of their papers with a high frequency (95.45% of the clauses analyzed show evidence of GM and the GM rate is 4.14). Second, there is an inequal contribution of types of GM in EPD in which the EPD authors make full use of ideational GM (instances of ideational GM appears densely in EPD); and within ideational GM, they uses mostly Type 2, 13, 1, 6, 12 and 5. Third, interpersonal GM is found occasionally and no textual GM could be figured out in the EPD. This helps increase the objectivity, formality, comprehensiveness, technicality and abstraction of the pharmaceutical writing. 2. Implications 2.1. To teachers First, it is advisable for ELT and ESP teachers to raise students‟ awareness of the existence of GM. Through GM a great deal of sequence, figure and element become nominal groups which have more content words than their congruent realizations, increasing the lexical density in the clause as well as the difficulty of the passage. Second, GMs are used at a very high rate in each EPD, hence, the knowledge of GM is of great importance in teaching and learning EPD. In teaching reading, the concept of GM and nominalization should be treated with caution by the teachers. In addition, knowledge of GM is an effective tool to help students develop their argument in writing tasks. Since ideational GM is shown to be used most frequently in EPD; as a result, ideational one should be paid much more attention.GMs generally appear in the form of „summary words‟ preceded by some deictic elements packaging previous information and promoting the progression of the message without tedious repetitions. However, this capacity to condense information may cause high levels of ambiguity, leading to a great difficulty in understanding the message, sometimes even to the specialists. Therefore, we suggest that GM should be taken into account in developing and choosing reading and writing material for students. Since GM is closely related to lexical density and nominalization, we suggest some kinds of exercises: identifying the content words, calculating the lexical density, writing academic papers with high lexical density, nominalizing the adjectives, verbs and adverbs, rewriting sentences, writing headlines, headings and titles, combining some simple clauses into one clause or even one nominal group, and etc. 2.2. To translators GM has been shown to be the most significant feature in EPD, the degree of difficulty of discourse has been closely connected with the number of GMs. GM maximizes the gap and distance between pharmaceutical knowledge and everyday or universal knowledge. Special attention should be paid to by the translator when translating a PD is the power and danger of GM and the nominalization which plays an important role in the consistency of a PD so as to give birth to a higher quality translation. An insight into the nature of GM will help him solve problems that may occur when decoding a PD and encoding it into a translated version in the target language. 3. Limitations Firstly, small corpus is a shortcoming of this study. GM is investigated in only 132 clauses in seven discourses; they share common linguistic features and have similar degree of difficulty in both language and subject knowledge. As a consequence, very few interpersonal GM and no textual GM could be found in the analysis. Secondly, as far as the analysis procedure is concerned, the writer does not compare her congruent variants for GMs with others, especially professional SFG linguists, for more reliable findings. Thirdly, no Vietnamese PDs are touched upon. The increasing Vietnamese pharmaceutical literature has been recognized recently means more PD papers have been written in Vietnamese. Fourthly, the present research has analyzed the GM with little effort made to examine it in relation to its information status, Given or New. It would be better if the study studied the information status in those GM discourses. Lastly, the reseacher, due to some limiations, does not cover syntagmatic and paradigmatic dimensions of GM. 4. Prospects for further studies Further studies should develop this topic by paying more attention to examine how interpersonal and textual GM is used, of course, within other corpora. 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Language Generation: Linguistic Description and Computational Representation, Cassell, London 29 Thompson G (1996), Introducing Functional Grammar (1st Edition), Arnold, London IN VIETNAMESE: 1 Ngô Gia Hy (2005), Từ điển bách khoa Y học Anh-Việt A-Z, Nhà xuất bản Y học, Hà Nội 2 Đỗ Tuấn Minh (2001), “Vai trò của quá trình danh hóa trong ngôn bản khoa học tiếng Anh”, Ngoại ngữ, số 3, tr 11-13, Hà Nội . Concluding remarks In short, we have provided an investigation into GM in English with the emphasis on its nature and classification. CHAPTER 3 GRAMMATICAL METAPHOR IN ENGLISH PHARMACEUTICAL DISCOURSE. Nominalizations increases the objectivity, chains of reasoning and pharmaceutical taxonomies and terminologies of EPD. 3.5. Frequency of use of grammatical metaphor in English pharmaceutical discourse. use GM in constructing their discourse. 3.6. Types of grammatical metaphor in English pharmaceutical discourse 3.6.1. Ideational metaphor We adapt the table of class shift by Matthiessen in Halliday