Nominalizations: Application of Grammatical Metaphor in the News Articles of Bangladesh-China Relations

This study, within the framework of Halliday’s Systemic Functional Grammar, aims to find out the types of nominalization and their functions in the news articles of Bangladesh-China relations. Bangladesh established the diplomatic relation with China on 4 October 1975. Since then the BSS has shown great interest in the relationship between the two countries. By combining the qualitative and quantitative methods, this paper includes 140 news articles from the BSS on the topic (1975-2016). Grammatical Metaphor Theory is applied to identify the specific functions of nominalization in the news articles, which are calculated by the Wordsmith Tools. The findings show that process nominalization is the top-highest frequently metaphor (40.3%), while circumstance nominalization is the second-highest metaphor (35.8%). Further, relator nominalization is the third-highest metaphor (14.2%), while quality nominalization is the fourth-highest metaphor (8.4%). The lowest nominalization is entity nominalization, which is only 1.4%. The findings also show that process nominalization can increase the level of objectivity and conciseness of Bangladesh-China relations. By contrast, quality nominalization can increase the distance between the readers and the editors. Relator and entity nominalizations are rarely used in the news articles of the BSS. Further, practical implications are drawn for the readers about the function of nominalization in the news articles, which are concise, objective, and formal. Therefore, this paper will be helpful for those, who are interested in the study of the relations between Bangladesh and China.

Shell nouns as grammatical metaphor revealing disparate construals: Investigating the differences between British English and China English based on a comparable corpus

This article describes a study of shell nouns (SNs) complemented by appositive that-clauses observed in a two-million-word corpus of media English by British and Chinese writers. The grammatical metaphor theory was applied to the data in the light of a novel proposal that the metaphorical forms of SN+that constructions, in their contextual semantic settings, serve to re-construe various transitivity processes. The study produced significant findings, including: (1) the two writer groups demonstrate significantly different preferences for SN types but the British and the Chinese uses are instantiated from a common core set; (2) the Chinese group prefers the re-construal of Identifying Relational processes of facts and evidence as markers of neutral and impersonal discourse; (3) British writers favour the re-construal of Verbal processes of assertion and stance and tend to re-construe Attributive Relational processes with varying degrees of commitment to the encapsulated propositional truth; (4) both groups are inclined towards the re-construal of Mental processes of cognition with a common preference for the re-construal of the experience of knowing, believing and thinking. The findings above lend important empirical support to systemic functional theories and suggest further research in the future regarding SNs as indicators of disparate construals in discourse.