Grammatical metaphor in Vietnamese educational press release’s leads

Abstract

Grammatical metaphor, first introduced by Halliday (1985), is considered a resource for creating meaning in discourse by shifting from the lexical-grammatical dimension to the functional-semantic system within the framework of systemic functional grammar theory. It encompasses two types of grammatical metaphor  transitivity grammatical metaphor and interpersoanl grammatical metaphor. Subsequently, Martin (1992) further investigated and affirmed the existence of textual grammatical metaphor as one of the three types of grammatical metaphor in systemic functional linguistics. Building on this theoretical foundation, the article analyzes the phenomenon of grammatical metaphor in Vietnamese educational press release headlines, identifying various modes of expression, both incompatible (metaphorical) and compatible (non-metaphorical), aimed at conveying the communication message. The results indicate that all three types of grammatical metaphor appear in Vietnamese educational press release headlines. Textual grammatical metaphor predominates, accounting for 34% of the total analyzed data. Transitivity grammatical metaphor is realized through nominalization of verb groups and nominalization of clauses, reducing process to participant, accounting for 28%, Interpersonal grammatical metaphor, as shown through mood metaphor and modality metaphor, only constitutes 6%, reflecting the objectivity of the press release.