Types of Grammatical Metaphors in Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban

Types of Grammatical Metaphors in Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban

Nesa Nabifar

 Hamed Kazemzad

Department of Literature and Foreign Languages, Tabriz Branch, Islamic Azad University, Tabriz, Iran

Grammatical Metaphor (GM) is one of the fresh language phenomena introduced by Halliday (1985) in the framework of functional grammar. Thompson (2004) states that the salient source of GM would be ‘Nominalization’ where a noun form attempts to represent a verb form or in other words, a verb form with its different process is represented in a noun form. He continues that any wording is ought to be either metaphorical or congruent wording. In this study the story of Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban was explored in search of GMs deployed throughout the first two chapters.  This study tended to identify the instances of nominalization types of GM in the first two chapters of Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban and offer the congruent wording.  As the next step, the congruent wordings were compared with metaphorical wording in order to find out the lexical density of each wording. The lexical density was obtained by Concordance software. The result of study illustrated , in a very crystal-clear way, the advantage of GM in adult writing which is stated to be one of the noticeable points regarding GM by Halliday (1985).The result obtained statistically revealed that  the deployment of GM increases the lexical density, which again was claimed by Halliday (2004) as one of the other salient points about GM. Based on the findings of this study, some implications can be drawn for academic writing and reading as well as for teachers involved in writing and reading pedagogy.

Keywords:  Grammatical Metaphors, Types, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban

Many language studies involve the exploration of the relationship between language and meaning. In fact, the relationship between words and meanings in one hand, and how they make such a meaningful make up on the other hand have always been of paramount interest for many of language scholars. Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL), based on the work of Halliday (1985), deals with this relationship by developing the concept of Grammatical Metaphor (GM). GM is a phenomenon arising from the stratification of the content plane in a language. According to SFL, a language is a complex semiotic system with various strata (Halliday & Matthiessen, 1999).  On the other hand, the content plane of any language revolves around two strata of semantics and lexicogrammar (Yanning, 2008). Semantic stratum deals with the transformation of human experience and interpersonal relationships into meanings while the lexicogrammar stratum which unifies the lexical and grammatical parts of language, is concerned with the further transformation of meanings into wordings. Halliday and Matthiessen (1999) claim that semantic and lexico-grammatical stratum in a language are related by the means of realization. In the development of human languages, this realizational relationship evolves first as patterns where semantic units are congruently mapped onto lexico-grammatical ones. For example, semantic unit of sequence is congruently realized through the grammatical category of clause complex. The congruent patterns are not the only form of realization because the stratified content plane has the potential for the realignment of mapping between semantic and lexico-grammatical units. For instance, semantic unit of sequence can be realized grammatically as a clause or even a group instead of a clause complex. This realignment of the relationship between semantics and lexicogrammar, as defined by Halliday and Matthiessen (1999), is the phenomenon of GM. For this reason, the researcher hopes the present study will shed light on the linguistic knowledge about the grammatical metaphor used in Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban helping writers, readers, teachers, students and translators to understand language more effectively.

Theoretical Framework

The theoretical study of GM within SFL (Ravelli, 1985; Halliday, 1985; Martin, 1992) yields a better understanding of language from the contextual and semogenic perspectives. According to studies in this field, GM is interrelated with the three meta-functions of language which are ideational, interpersonal and textual. GM is a critical resource for managing theme and information systems by which the textual meta-function of a text is realized (Ravelli,2003). GM As a phenomenon impacting on meta-functions and oriented to specific mode, field and tenor, GM has become a significant consideration with regards to the contextual analysis of language in use. GM is also a lexico-grammatical resource closely related to the three processes of semogenesis, namely, the evolution of human language (phylogenesis), the development of an individual speaker (ontogenesis), and the unfolding of a text (logogenesis) (Ravelli,1985). According to Halliday and Matthiessen (1999), the congruent and metaphorical expressions of a meaning are respectively the two poles of a continuum. To be more specific, the congruent expression evolves earlier in a language, emerges earlier in language development and comes earlier in a text, that is, a child uses congruent wordings in the early years of language acquisition. This connection between GM and the three axes of semohistory determines GM as a useful tool in describing and comparing language use in temporal sense (Halliday &Matthiessen 1999). This explanation leads the study to investigate the story of Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban following the SFG approach. After reviewing the related literature, and presenting the methodology, data analysis, and a discussion of the results are given.

Review of the Literature

The theoretical and methodological approach underpinning this work is SFLby Halliday. SFL treats language as a semantic configuration of meanings that are typically associated with a particular context. According to SFL, language thus cannot be separated from either its speakers or its context (Halliday 1985, 1994). This study is aimed at pinpointing the GM used in Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. The researcher is going to identify and analyze nominalized words based on their process types. So, first a brief review of the history of SFL and important concepts related to grammatical metaphor will be presented.

Metaphor

Metaphor is one of the well-known phenomena in language and literature. It has always received a lot of attention from different disciplines such as philosophy, psychology, linguistics and literary studies (Taverniers, 2004). Metaphor, in fact, is a kind of movement in which one thing is moved beyond itself to be something different (Taverniers, 2004). Following are two examples:

Example 1. All the senior managers will be swept out.

Example 2. He didn’t grasp it.      

As Tavermiers (2004, p. 4) puts it

The metaphorical nature of each of these examples can be explained by means of   ‘from…to…’ expression. In (1) sweep out which literary means movement by which something is moved from a certain place, is used to refer to a meaning of ‘dismissing staff  members’. The word grasp which appears in example (2) has as its original meaning ‘ to seize something and hold it’, which is again a physical action. However, in the examples it is used to refer to the understanding an idea.” Also, it could be said that metaphor concerns with the movement from a literal to a figurative meaning and the movement is carried out upon a word or lexeme. In metaphorical wording, one word which does have its own literal meaning is used to express its own figurative meaning .

In other words, the type of metaphor that these expressions present can be named lexical metaphor. O’Halloran and Veltman (2000) argue for the broader conceptualizations of metaphor, in terms if other modes of semiosis and other linguistic levels, specifically, the phonological (Ravelli, 2003 as cited in GM, 2003).

Systemic Functional Linguistics and GM

Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) or Systemic Functional Grammar (SFG) is a functional theory of language developed by Halliday which explores the language in terms of its functioning in human lives (Taverniers, 2004).  Systemic-functional linguistics (SFL), as its name suggests, considers function and semantics as the basis of human language and communicative activities (Martin, Matthiessen & Painter, 1997). The term ‘systemic’ refers to the view of language as “a network of systems, or interrelated sets of options for making meaning and the term ‘functional’ refers to the view that language is as it is because of what it has evolved to do” (Haliday, 1994, p.15).

As one of the many concepts introduced in the framework of SFL, Halliday (1984) introduced GM for the first time against the background of lexical metaphor (Taverniers, 2004). Halliday (1985, 1994, & 2003) points out that, nominalization is the typical instance of GM. In GM or Nominalization, actions that are usually described by a sentence such as they do their homework are presented in a noun phrase such as doing homework (Painter, 2005).

While for many readers GM may have seemed a phenomenon at the borderline of lexicogrammar, it has since turned into one of the organizing concepts linking semantics and lexicogrammar (Yanning, 2008). In addition to forming an intellectual tool for thinking about the relationship between semantics and grammar, the notion of grammatical metaphor — through its anchoring in ‘semogenesis’ or the evolution of meaning — also opens the door to a better understanding of the development of language within a culture, as well as within individuals, and it provides us with a tool to analyze the genesis and development of meanings in texts. It would be argued that it can also be made into a potentially very powerful tool in comparative linguistics, translation theory and related areas (Yanning, 2008).

Grammatical Metaphor Complementing Lexical Metaphor

The first introduction of the concept of GM goes back to Halliday (1994) in a short paper claiming that this phenomenon is a kind of metaphor which is grammatical rather than lexical. Also, as one of the prominent figures, Ravelli (1985) attempted to explore the nature of GM. Both  Halliday and Ravelli's contributions have provided a solid base for the further studies. In fact, Halliday (1985,1994) attempted to extend the concept of metaphor to the grammatical field while it was formerly understood to be a lexical phenomenon. In addition, Halliday explained “lexical selection is just one aspect of grammatical selection or wording and that metaphorical variation is lexico-grammatical rather than simply lexical” (1985, p.320). Later , Halliday (2004) studied the relationship between lexical metaphor and grammatical metaphor in his Introduction to functional grammar (Halliday;1984 , 1985) in a separate chapter on this subject by the title of ‘Beyond the clause: Metaphorical modes of expression’. To introduce his newly born concept, Grammatical Metaphor, Halliday (1978) created a general framework outlining traditionally recognized types of ‘rhetorical transference’ or ‘figures of speech’: metaphor, metonymy and synecdoche (Taverniers, 2002, p.5).  In fact, in order to create a theoretical background for the combination of lexical metaphor and GM, Halliday (1999) explains metaphor, metonymy and synecdoche through a grammatical view point. In other words, “there is such a thing as grammatical metaphor where the variation is essentially in the grammatical forms” (Halliday, 1985, p.320). 

Halliday (1994) presents the relationship between GM and LM more clearly by introducing ‘from above’ and ‘from below’ perspectives in SFL as shown in Figure 1.

Figure 1. Two perspectives on metaphor (after Halliday 1994/1985, p.342)

In ‘from below’ perspective, the words are taken as starting point and then something is said about the meanings of these words while in ‘from above’ perspective, the starting point is a specific meaning and the relevant question is: ‘‘which are the different ways in which this meaning can be expressed or realized’’ (Taverniers, 2002, p.6). Ravelli (2003) taking the same view ‘from above’ view as Halliday, defines GM as the alternative realization of the same meaning. Alternative perspectives are visually represented in Figure 2.1 based on Halliday’s figure (1994/1985, as cited in Taverniers, 2002, p.6).

Thompson (1994) introduced congruent form as the closer general interpretation in the outer world. Halliday (1985) claims that the text expressed through the most typical form of representation is congruent. In the study of the GM the terms of ‘congruence’ and ‘metaphor’ are employed to represent the different realizations of a given semantic configuration (Marie & Vandenberg, 2003).  In this perspective, different expressions of the same meaning are compared while it is difficult to find alternative expressions of a given meaning which only differ from one another in only one lexeme (Tavernies, 2003).Thompson (2004) presenting the provisional definition of GM as the expression of meaning through a lexico-grammatical form mentioned that a metaphorical meaning is related to different ways of expression of a particular meaning which would be congruent wording and continues that this formulation was designed to be applied to the lexical metaphor as well and that there is not any difference between two kinds necessarily and lexical metaphor can be counted as a sub-category of GM.

GM as Rrealignment of Strata

One of the key motivations in the study of GM would perhaps be the strata realignment of semantic and lexico-grammatical  levels of content plane in a language (Yanning, 2008). Both GM and LM involve a realignment between a pair of strata ,which is because of the stratified nature of linguistic system that meaning is drown as abstract lexico-grammatical  forms which leads to possibility of different realizations (Vandenbergen et al, 2003).  Ravelli (2003), discussing the strata realignment of GM, writes that  “metaphorical processes depend on a kind of play between the two strata, a sense of two things happening at once, or a tension between the form and its meaning” (p.42).            

The first-phase analysis of the nature of GM enlightens relationship between GM and the strata relationship between semantics and lexicogrammar. For example, Ravelli’s (1985) models reveal that GM is linked to the realization relationship between semantics and lexicogrammar. Model B in Figure 2.2 is more powerful in the understanding of GM because in this model GM is treated as the result of the compounding of semantic choice (Vandenbergen et al, 2003). But here is a simple problem and that is, there is not enough exploration of semantic compounding due to the lack of description of semantics system (Eggins, 1994). Halliday (1998) discusses this feature of GM by introducing the concept of ‘semantic junction’ which is a phenomenon occurring across categories and ranks. In terms of category, the metaphorical expressions of shakiness and development do not lose their original meaning of quality and process although they are treated as if they are things. According to Halliday and Matthiessen (1999, p. 243), “they are just a fusion or ‘junction’, of two semantic elemental categories: shakiness is a ‘quality thing’, development is a ‘process thing’”. Semantic junction also occurs in the sense of rank: engine failure “is both a figure consisting of participant (‘engine’) and process (‘fail’) and an element (participant) consisting of thing (‘failure’) + classifier (‘engine’)” (Halliday &Matthiessen, 1999, p. 286). The discussion of semantic junction shows that GM “is not just a variation form, identical in meaning with its congruent agnate – it also incorporates semantic features from the categories that its own form would congruently construe” (Halliday &Matthiessen, 1999, p. 286). In the light of semantic junction, it is possible to describe how two semantic choices are compounded to form an entry point for a metaphorical realization.

     Derevianka (2001) also discusses the stratified nature of the language as a semiotic system which gives rise to the potential for metaphorical processes (Ravelli, 2003). Halliday (1978) noticed the different levels of language in his early studies of antilanguage in an article ‘language in urban society’. Halliday in this article attempts to explore the different social varieties of language in different contexts (Taverniers, 2003).  The use of high varieties of language in formal contexts and low varieties in informal contexts is called ‘‘the congruent pattern’’ (as cited in Taverniers, 2003, p. 14).  It is the pattern in which a language variety is used in that context by which it is defined as the norm (Taverniers, 2003). It is said that the variation from this norm is observed in almost all the levels of anti-language (Yanning, 2008). Halliday points out that each of these variations would be explained in more general terms as “an alternative realization of an element on the next or on some higher stratum”(as cited in Taverniers, 2003, p. 15). In one hand we have morphological, lexical and syntactic variants as alternative lexicogrammatical realizations of the same meaning and on the other hand phonological variants as alternative realizations of the same word (Taverniers, 2003). Therefore, assuming that the highest stratum within the linguistics system is semantic stratum, all the variants are likely to be identical semantically (Halliday, 1978).

Method

The present study was conducted with the aim of identifying types of ideational grammatical metaphors and types of processes in Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban.  This part elaborates on methodological dimensions, i.e., the data collection, explaining the procedure, the research design, as well as the data analysis.

 Research Questions

Based on the nature of the comparative studies, the following study attempts to find the answer to the following questions:

1. Does J.K. Rowling employ GM in writing two chapters of  the Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban?
2. Based on the first question, what is the semantic choice of GM in two chapters of  Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban?

Material

Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban is the third novel in the Harry  Potter series written by J. K. Rowling. The book was published on 8 July 1999. The novel won the 1999 Whitbread Book Award, the Bram Stoker Award, the 2000 Locus Award for  the Best Fantasy Novel, and it was short-listed for other awards, including the Hugo. A film based on the novel was released on 31 May 2004, in the United Kingdom and 4 June 2004 in the U.S. as well as in many other countries. Two chapters of this book was chosen for identification of IGM. 

Design

This study was designed according to the qualitative research methodology. The text analysis was done in terms of GMs employed in the story.  As the first step the definition given by Thompson (2004) about GM that nominalization is the main tools for creating Grammatical Metaphor, is taken into consideration in identifying the GM instances throughout the first two chapters of the story.

Thompson (2004, p. 226) gives the following example declaring that the nominal form is derived from a verbal form:

Example 3- These ideas have been subject to widespread criticism.

 The congruent form of the above sentence would be the following wording :

Example 4- Many people have criticized these ideas.

As seen clearly above, the nominal item ‘criticism’ is derived from the verbal form ‘criticize’

The second step was to figure out the semantic choices of the GM, using Ravelli’s (1988) categorization of the ideational metaphors as seen in Table 1 applied as the main theoretical framework around which the study evolves.

Table 1

Ideational Metaphor Types in Ravelli 1988 (Taverniers, 2003, p.22)

 In this table, Ravelli (1988) has attempted to categorize the semantic choices out of which GM is raised. The first five semantic categories show the processes of GM born out of nominalization. For example analyzing example (2) given by Thompson (2004) according to Table 1 and what Ravelli (1988) has categorized, we would see that the example has ‘verbal process’ since it is born out of the verb of ‘criticize’.

In Table 1., Ravelli (1988) has attempted to categorize the semantic choices out of which GMs are raised. In other words, the first five semantic choices illustrate the processes that nominalization would have.

Data Analysis and Discussion

In this part, the first two chapters of Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban is analyzed on the basis of the definitions  of GM presented by Thompson (2004) and Ravelli (1985). As mentioned previously ,GM is a tool to express a verb form in a noun form in order to increase the lexical density of the language in one hand and making it an adult way of speaking and writing on the other hand. GM seems to be a new notion for the researchers and research studies of language and to be specific, it is a new brand of interest for the scholars interested in systemic functional linguistics.

Identifying the Instances of GM, Congruent Wording ,  and Semantic Choice in the Original Text

As mentioned earlier, the first step is to identify the instances of GM, specifically, the instances of nominalization in the first two chapters based on what Thompson (2004) calls the main source out of which GM arises. Table 4.1 presents a brief piece of information regarding this identification. As illustrated in this table, 28 pages of the Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban were analyzed for the examples of GM. Altogether, these two chapters contain about 107 paragraphs, in 40 paragraphs of which nominalization type of  GM was deployed.

Table 2

The Basic Representation of the Analysis of the Original Text

Halliday (1985), for the first time, talks about the relationship between lexical density of a text and GM. Based on what Halliday (1985), Ravelli (1999) and Thompson (2004) pointed out, it is argued that GM is a tool that can increase the lexical density of a written discourse and make it more worthwhile from the point of view of writing. It is generally believed that the density of context, produced by the employment of GM ,is much higher than the congruent wording of the same text. Table 2 represents the lexical density of metaphorical and congruent wording of the first two chapters of the story, obtained by Concordance Software. As indicated in Table 2, the number of words in the metaphorical wording is 342 words while in a congruent wording it is 448 words which is a clear indication of the lexical density in metaphorical wording.

Table 2

The Representation of Lexical Density through the Representation of Grammatically Congruent and Metaphorical Wordings of the two Chapters.

The GMs, Congruent Wordings ,  and Semantic Choices in Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban

    Thompson (2004) in his studies of GM presents the examples in which he has expanded GM to suggest the congruent wording and metaphorical wording of a meaning. From the analysis of different texts in the same study, Thompson (2004) concludes that Nominalization, if not the most important, is one of the most important sources out of which the GM rises. On the other hand, Ravelli (1988) presents ideational metaphor types, shown in Table 1, in which he identifies five processes for GM,  in particular, for nominalization. In this part, the GM examples, extracted from the story of Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, are presented in Tables  2 to 8, with their congruent wordings, and semantic choices.   Table 3 shows the GM identified through page 7 to 11 of the story of Harry Potter and the Prisoner of the Azkaban. As it is clear, in about 11 paragraphs, 10 examples of GM have been extracted.

Some sentences such as example 1 represent the application of GM twice in a simple sentence. One of the main benefits of GM is the production of high literal and adult wordings (Haliday, 1985). To illustrate this fact more tangibly, it is worth paying attention to Example 2 and its congruent wording. Here ,it is clear that the GM has allowed the writer to produce a literal wording which at the first sight seems quite outstanding for a native and adult speaker in spite of the fact that understanding it would be somehow burdensome for the nonnative readers of English.

Table 3 also represents the semantic choices for each of the examples according to the categorization of Ravelli (1988). Here, 4 out of 9 examples, have material, 2 behavioral, 2 verbal and 1 mental processes.

In Table 4, the GMs extracted from pages 12 to 15 of the Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban are presented. This table illustrates the analysis of 8 paragraphs of which 9 examples have been extracted.

Table 3

The Presentation of GMs, Congruent Wordings, and Semantic Choices on Pages 7-11

Table 4

The Presentation of GMs, Congruent Wordings, and Semantic Choices on Pages 12 to15

The highest percentage regarding the semantic choice goes to Material process which includes 7 examples,  followed by behavioral and relational processes, respectively.

The following table (Table 5) represents the GMs on pages 16- 18 of  the Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban.

A point worth mentioning is that a simple look at Table 5 shows that, in most  of the examples, the GMs have been accompanied by an adjective, such ‘nasty look’ or ‘strange quiver’,  while the verbal form of them can hardly express this impression with an adverb. In other words, this table pinpoints quite clearly one of the advantages of GM in literature which expresses a meaning with an attached feeling rather than pure verbs accompanied by adverbs which would make the individual words look more alive.

Table 5

The Presentation of GMs, Congruent Wordings, and Semantic Choices on Pages 16 to 18

Table 6 represents the 11 examples of GM on the first 4 pages of chapter two. In this table, there are 4 mental, 4 behavioral, 1 verbal, 1 material and 1 relational processes.  The examples of Table 4.6, in addition to all the proceeding and following tables, illustrate how perfectly GM gives the writer the opportunity to produce unique structures and mix two different sentences in one simple sentence.

Table 6 also represents the GMs, congruent wordings, and semantic choices for each of the examples on pages 19- 21 in the Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban.

Table 6 represents the examples of GMs extracted from page 19 to21. Here, as illustrated clearly, there are 16 examples of GM. The examples here are also good proof for the facts that are prevailing regarding GM.

    As mentioned in the second chapter of the study, GM is a tool for adult writing and production of high literal writings. To prove this, one good example would be example 41 (Table 6.) Comparing the metaphorical wording and congruent wording, we come across a big difference. Although both of the wordings express the same meaning which is ‘kissing’ here, but the metaphorical wording gives a sort of feeling and imagination of the simple words which hardly can be achieved through the congruent wording. This is what makes GM a unique tool of language.

Table 6

The Presentation of GM, Congruent Wording, and Semantic Choices on Pages 19 to21

Table 7

The Presentation of GMs, Congruent Wordings, and Semantic Choices on Pages 22 to 25

Table 8 presents 8 examples extracted from pages 26 to 28 with their congruent illustrations, and semantic choices and translational approaches.

In Table 7,the GMs, congruent wordings, and semantic choices on pages 21 to 25 are illustrated.

Table 8

The Presentation of GMs, Congruent Wordings, and Semantic Choices on Pages 26 to28      

Like the previous tables, Table 8 also illustrates the defined characteristics of GM as well. Here, example 56 represents a sentence in which a ‘look’ which has ‘behavioral’ process has got some adjectives which can never be expressed by one or more adverbs accompanied the verbal form. In other words, the congruent wording of this example specifies all the adjectives to the person rather than the look that the people may give. 

      In Table 8, 3 out of 8 examples, are verbal, 2 behavioral 2 mental and 1 material processes.

Discussion

In this study, 62 examples of GM were extracted from 28 pages. As the initial job throughout the study their semantic choices according to the categorization of Ravelli (1988) were suggested,  the distribution of which are presented in Figure 1.

Figure 1. The number and percentage of semantic choices of the GMs in the two chapters of Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban

As Figure 1 suggests, 20 out of 62 examples have had material process which is justifiable considering the fact that most of the verbs have material process since verbs in most cases are carrying out a job. Also, the least percentage is for relational process with 4.46 percent.

The first  point to be drawn from the first stage of the study, i.e., the identification of GM, would be that of application of GM which paves the way of the writer to create a literally valuable masterpiece such as the story of Harry Potter. One of the differences between a literary work and its simplified form would be the lexical words that are used to express a meaning. For example ,in the following example (number 5) the meaning to be expressed is ‘thanked Harry’ while it is accompanied by a set of adjectives and nouns that make it more wonderful writing. Such writing is not possible  or does not sound good with the application of a verb.

Example 5. Errol one bleary eye, gave a feeble hoot of thanks and began to gulp some water.

A further point drawn from the identification of GMs throughout the first two chapters of Harry Potter was the advantage of application of GM in increasing the lexical density. As shown in the previous part, application of GM increases the lexical density. Of course it should be mentioned here that this is not always a rule since in the above example it is seen that the GM has reduced the lexical density. However, in any case, any ‘verb form’ requires an ‘actor’. As in the example below (Number 6), which is a sentence extracted from the story for the purpose of this comparison:

Metaphorical Wording:

Example 6. Remembering their last meeting as he stood in the dark window,

Congruent wording:

Example 7. Remembering the last time that they met each other as he stood in the  dark window,

The lexical density acquired by Concordance software for the metaphorical wording is 11 words while the same for congruent wording is 16 words. As stated, a core characteristic of nominalization as a GM is that it turns actions into things, thus Nominalizations give existence to things; in particular, they create conceptual objects. The purpose of using an IGM is to render the lexis and grammar in the way the speaker or the writer wants in order to produce or inform a certain effect on his/her reader or audience. In Harry Potter, the goal is the conveyance of the intended meaning to the reader in a tempting and interesting way.

Finally, it was found that, not always, a noun form standing as a sample of GM would be raised out of a verb  form, but, sometimes without having a verb form, a noun form plays the role of a GM. Consider the following Examples:

Example 8.  A sudden emotion overtook him.

Example 9. Suddenly he felt emotional.

As illustrated in Examples 8 and 9, ‘emotion’ is a grammatical metaphor which stands for the verb of ‘feeling’ and does not have any verb form as its base form.

Conclusion

This paper investigated a particular lexico-grammatical resource, to which SFL refers to as IGM, in the story of Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, as one of the bestselling books with wide world critical and readership success. The reason for choosing this source for a detailed linguistic analysis was its global fame. Developed mainly by Halliday (1985,1994), the notion of GM  shows an original and innovative contribution that identifies and describes the fact that   literary works, in writing and in speaking, are functionally oriented to accomplishing objectification and abstraction of their content. They achieve this functional goal through the linguistic means of GM, a resource that condenses information by expressing experiences and events in an incongruent form, as contrasted with the more customary congruent form that prevails in everyday language use. The predominant lexico-grammatical feature found  in the  story of Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban was the extensive and elaborate use of the nominal group, represented by nominalization. Based on the results, it was noticed that the overwhelming occurrence of GMs in Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban increased the general volume of information the clause or the sentence expresses: the greater the number of included nominalizations, the greater the volume of the information expressed by the sentence. In the present study, it was also found that  the material process was   used more than other processes and the behavioral process was  the second dominant process type. Finally, in most of the examples, the GMs   co-occurred by an adjective while their verbal form could hardly express this impression with an adverb. As it was mentioned earlier, GM is as an important characteristic of written English, created through the grammatical process of derivation. In these two stories, the use of GM, as one of the main characteristics of highly literal texts, has made the tone of the writing to sound more abstract and more formal through placing high quality on the transference of information in an economical and condensed way. Thus, it can be concluded that the use of GM is an ideal device in literary discourse.

The Authors

            Nesa Nabifar is an assistant professor of linguistics at Islamic Azad University of Tabriz. She received her Ph.D. in General Linguistics from University of Science and Research in Iran in 2010. She has published several articles attended national and international conferences on General and Applied Linguistics.Her research interests include discourse analysis , syntax, semantics and semitiocs .

            Hamed Kazemzad got his MA in English Language Teaching from Islamic Azad university of Tabriz.His main interest includes discourse analysis and translation.

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