Ideational Grammatical Metaphor in Merry Shelly’s Frankenstein and its Cinematic Adaptation

Ideational Grammatical Metaphor in Merry Shelly’s Frankenstein and its Cinematic Adaptation

Sholeh Seyedvalilu ¹, Nasser Ghafoori ^*2

1,2. Department of English, Tabriz Branch, Islamic Azad University , Tabriz, Iran

*Corresponding author: ghafoori@iaut.ac.ir

Received: 2016.7.28

Revisions received: 2016.12.6

Accepted: 2017.2.11

Online publication: 2017.2.23

Abstract

Within Systemic Functional Linguistics, Grammatical Metaphor (GM) is a meaning-making resource lying at the experiential level that extends the meaning potential through cross-stratal re-mappings between the grammar and the semantics, boiling down, in one of its manifestations to expressing something that should have been a process (verb) in terms of a thing (noun). This study is an attempt at seeing how the frequency of GM used in the novel ‘Frankenstein’ written by Mary Shelly plays out in its cinematic adaptation. It is an attempt at investigating possible differences in the use of GM in the novel as a type of literary prose fiction and in one of its cinematic adaptations, the respective frequencies, along with what implications these differences carry in terms of generic features and functions of GM. In the 4200-word corpus analyzed for the movie adaptation, there were 70 instances of GM emerging upon analysis. In the 4200-word purposively sampled excerpt of the novel, there were above 330 instances of GM emerging. So the frequency of instances of GM in the written version was much more than that in the cinematic adaptation. This significant difference carries many possible cognitive, semantic, discursive, generic and textual implications. A number of pedagogical implications accrue to this research, such as increasing the knowledge of teachers and English language instructors with regard to the role of GM in making metaphorical forms in different texts, increasing knowledge of how to approach the teaching of the skill of reading and writing in upper-intermediate and intermediate classes, deeper critical reading abilities for learners, etc.

Keywords: grammatical metaphor, systemic functional grammar

Introduction

Studying the relationship between language and meaning is the main purpose of most language studies. In fact, many language studies involve the exploration of the relationship between words and their meanings on the one hand and how they make such a meaningful design on the other. This is what has always held a lot of interest for many researchers. Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL), based on the work of Halliday (1985), deals with this relationship by developing the concept of GM. This view of language, that regards it as systems and networks of interrelated choices consisting of subsystems as one overarching meaning potential, implies that language must be studied in different contexts, with its uses varying according to the situational contexts it occurs in. Language has evolved driven by the human need to make meanings about the world around us and inside us, and at the same time, it is the means for creating and maintaining our interpersonal relations (Halliday, 1985).

These motifs constitute two modes of meaning in discourse; what Halliday (1994) terms the “ideational and interpersonal metafunctions”. The ideational metafunction, which is the main focus of this study, is divided into two systems: the experiential and logical. The experiential metafunction organizes our experience and understanding of the world. The logical metafunction works above the experiential. It organizes our reasoning on the basis of our experiences. In other words, the logical metafunction is realized in the form of clause complexing and connective and cohesive relations between clauses as they bond with each other to form related ideas in consecutive clauses. All these functions simultaneously apply to the clause as the underlying unit of analysis and meaning making (Halliday, 1985, 1994). In SFL, the clause packs three simultaneous meanings inside it, that is, the ideational, interpersonal and textual meanings. These correspond to registerial (contextual) parameters of Field, Tenor and Mode of discourse, respectively. 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 lexico-grammar (Yanning, 2007). So language in Halliday’s view is not only a ‘social semiotic’ (a system of meaning making to serve and create social meanings) but also can be looked at as being a ‘stratified semiotic’, which means that strata are the means of talking about meaning making in human language: stratification conveys the gradual concretizing or abstracting of the processes of meaning-making: starting from context of situation (genre)/semantics at the topmost and most abstract stratum where thought and propositional content are decided upon in the mind, then coming further downwards towards the more concrete stratum of register when contextual parameters are taken into account and take shape, and then further below at the more concrete level than the register is lexico-grammar where we have the clause. Phonology and graphology lie beneath the lexico-grammar. The relationship between the strata in SFL is referred to as ‘realization’, in the sense that lexico-grammar ‘realizes’ a semantic configuration in the stratum of the semantics/genre and graphology/phonology ‘realize’ a clause in the lexico-grammar. The strata and the stratified nature of language, with the symbol → implying Realization, can be demonstrated by the simple diagram below:

Genre / Context of Culture / Semantics / Semantic Configuration → Context of Situation / Register → Lexico-grammar (the clause) → Phonology / Graphology

As to metaphor, the traditional view holds that metaphor is essentially a lexical phenomenon, but Halliday extends that notion to include a grammatical dimension in it as well. According to Halliday, metaphorical variation is lexico-grammatical rather than just lexical. This means that every lexical metaphor that looks purely lexical on its surface will be accompanied by GM too; on the other hand, every GM that looks purely grammatical on its surface will be accompanied by some sort of lexical transference. Metaphor in Halliday’s eyes can be viewed through the lenses of some class of transference; something changes and moves from its usual and unmarked position to another more unusual and unmarked form and positon. It is due to this reason that GM provides an additional way of expressing the same meaning. It is defined as an alternative lexico-grammatical realization of a semantic choice (Ravelli , 1985, 1999).

According to Halliday and Matthiessen (1994), GM explains new ways of saying (coding, encoding, encapsulating) that do not occur in everybody language. GM is a useful tool in describing and explaining different ideas and theories; GM is also known as the main machinery operating in and pushing forward adults’ language.

In general, Halliday (1994) argues that “written language has more ideational metaphors than spoken discourse” (p. 98). This is attributed to more general differences in types of complexity: written language is said to be more “lexically dense”, whereas spoken language is more “grammatically intricate”. In written language, various lexical meanings are often “packed” into one single nominal group. This is the context in which ideational metaphor occurs (Halliday does not further explain this aspect of the distribution of metaphor) (Taverniers, 2003).

The present study drew upon some previous research projects. Briones, Forttuny, Sastre, and de Pocovi (2003) examined the terms nominal compounds, complex nominal phrases, nominalizations, and grammatical metaphors (GMs). They argued that these terms were used by different authors and sometimes they were used interchangeably. In their study, they clarified the scope of each term, but they placed particular emphasis on grammatical metaphors, concluding that nominalizations in general and grammatical metaphors in particular are essential resources for constructing scientific discourse, and should, therefore, be taken into account in scientific writing courses.

The importance of these terms, of their role in textual and discursive practice and logo-genetic development in text and semantics, particularly GM, is treated elsewhere in applied linguistics as well, in genre analysis studies and theories, for instance. Bhatia (1993) raised the issue of language use in professional settings and genres, for example, and referred to the essential place of nominals in such genres. Similarly, Jalilifar et al (2014) explored nominalized expression types in an applied linguistics book and a biology book as two distinct disciplines. Their research set out to bolster the understanding of nominalization in academic textbooks and, thus, improved English for Specific Purposes (ESP) learners’ use of nominalization in their writing. They concluded that further research was needed to see how nominalization is exploited in other genres and other disciplines.

Xue-feng (2010) presents a good study on GM and the difficulties involved in its application when it comes to using GM for a revealing analytic tool of discourse. Wenyan (2012) looks at nominalization in different medical papers using a comparative standpoint. She concludes that there are differences in GM even within a single genre of closely related textual activities. In a similar spirit, Susinskiene (2009) makes a very good attempt to capture textual functions of nominalizations in English scientific discourse. Her work has a nicely tuned work of practical analysis with regard to GM in scientific discourse that every interested researcher can benefit from.

Among the best and seminal works in GM, there is Heyvaert (2003). It is an essential work whose chief argument rests on nominalization as GM and the need for a radically systemic and metafunctional approach. Galve (1998) is a challenging read that portrays the textual interplay of GM on the cases of nominalization occurring in a sample of written medical English. This is yet another work that can sharpen our sense of GM and its rather richer notion than other nominalization types.

In a study, Kazemian, Behnam, and Ghafoori focused on GM including process types and nominalization.  The researchers adopted Hallidayan Systemic Functional Grammar to pinpoint and analyze nominalization and the role played by it within a corpus of 10 authentic scientific texts drawn from very influential magazines. The analysis was conducted based on nominalization, its frequency and process types. The quantitative and qualitative analysis of the data displayed that GM had permeated scientific texts and the prevailing process types were material and relational types. Consequently, the tone of the writing was more abstract, technical and formal. Instances of GM in scientific writing enabled technicality and rationality. Based on the findings of the study, some implications were drawn for academic and scientific writing and reading as well as translators, students and instructors involved in writing and reading pedagogy.

 In the same line of research, the present study manipulates a systemic functional study of GM in a well-known and established work of fiction (i.e., Frankenstein, by Mary Shelly), and one of its cinematic adaptations, to undertake a theoretical exploration and practical analysis. One driving force behind choosing GM in this study is Halliday’s argument that GM and the primary process at work therein; that is, ‘nominalization’, is of the most important dimensions in evaluating and analyzing a text, at least from an ideational perspective. Also, analyzing a novel as an instance of written discourse and its cinematic adaptation as a type of discourse that leans towards the spoken, in terms of GM, can afford interesting insights and may open up new dimensions of text analysis. The impetus behind the selection of this novel and its movie adaptation in this study is to grasp how a literary author and a screenplay based upon it utilize GM as a tool to convey their outlook, ideology, feeling and worldview to the readers and the audience. Accordingly, the present study attempted to find answers to the following research question:

1. Are there any differences in the frequency of using Ideational Grammatical Metaphor in the novel ‘Frankenstein’ and its cinematic adaptation?

2. What implications do the findings carry in terms of generic features and functions of Grammatical Metaphor?

Method

The Corpus

The main objective of the present study was to compare instances of GM in Mary Shelly's famous novel ‘Frankenstein’ and one of its cinematic adaptations, and also possibly comment on and delineate potential generic or discursive motivations behind such (potentially) differential use. In this regard, there are two issues to be noted. First, the textual corpus analyzed for each compared genre comprised 4200 words. This corpus size was due to the fact that the sentences used in the cinematic adaptation put together comprised 4200 words, which led the researcher to the imperative to choose the same number of words for the novel.

Also, to the best of the researcher's knowledge, there are 11 adaptations of this novel so far produced. The one used in this research was produced in 1931 by James Whale. The reasons behind selecting this adaptation rather than others was the fact that it is probably the best known adaptation of the novel and perhaps the best received one among the public. In 1991, the Library of Congress selected Frankenstein for preservation in the United States National Film Registry as being “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant.

Design

 The study adopted an exploratory, qualitative text-analytic research design. It looked at a textual and discursive phenomenon actually occurring in text, exploring its real-time contextual properties and functions, and finally decided, qualitatively, which relevant linguistic and discourse category to assign it to.

Procedure

The procedures of analyzing the data for this research involved analyzing every sentence of the movie, amounting to 4200 words, and a commensurate size of text in the novel. This analysis was in terms of the presence and instances of nominalized GM. The size of the corpus in the movie adaptation also involved a random sampling of the novel that, in this study, was chosen to be every tenth page of it, so that by a certain tenth page, equal corpus size between the two genres in comparison could be achieved, with both of the compared sub-genres represented by the same number of words. Furthermore, every instance of GM, located in the two genres, was unpacked; that is, one of its congruent realizations was suggested. Although this was not a component of our research pursuit, and although this was a rather demanding process, it was, nevertheless, a necessary step to reveal the nature of the GM.

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Results

In-depth textual analyses of nominalized GMs in the two genres were manually compared. Here, firstly, the sentences of the novel were analysed in terms of GM (nominalized ideational metaphor in our case), and then the instances of GM in the movie, Frankenstein, were brought out and unpacked. In each case, the analysis proceeded sentence-by-sentence, the unit of the analysis being the stretch of words occupying the space between two full stops. For every sentence, suggested unpacked congruent versions were put forward, without which the nature and motivation behind the metaphorical variant would remain unclear (Ravelli, 1999). In each case, the words or expressions considered to be instances of metaphorical language were underlined.

This is followed by a suggested unpacked version where the commensurate congruent wordings are shown in bold. An exploratory discourse-analytic treatment follows each Table, outlining and revisiting what the GM choices were, and what non-metaphorical versions could be suggested for each instance of GM. Some sample analyses are presented below:

Example 1:  IGM within the novel

-          I feel exquisite pleasure in dwelling on the recollections of childhood, before misfortune had tainted my mind and changed its bright visions of extensive usefulness into gloomy and narrow reflections upon self.

As said above, the underlined designate the nominalized ideational metaphors we believe are being used. A suggested unpacking for the congruent is the following:

-          I am very pleased when I dwell on what I remember of the time when I was a child, before what made me unfortunate and miserable had contaminated my mind and changed the pictures and dreams my mind saw of being extensively useful into small periods of thinking deeply about myself. 

Below, a table for the metaphorical choices and congruent pairs for those metaphors are presented:

Table 1

Sample 1 of IGM within the novel

In this sentence, chosen from the novel, the phrase I feel exquisite pleasure uses the nominalized ideational metaphor pleasure as a metaphorical variant, for which a suggested alternative realization in the non-metaphorical (congruent domain) can be I am very pleased. This congruent realization, as can be easily seen, lends itself to smoother understanding where, a reader (native or non-native) who is at a lower stage of linguistic development will have less trouble processing I am very pleased than they will I feel exquisite pleasure.

Similarly, the phrase in dwelling on can be looked at as being a metaphorical realization for the alternative choice when I dwell on, which is easier and faster for a lower-level reader to process cognitively. The two GMs in the phrase the recollections of childhood are the metaphorical realizations for the more congruent and unmarked (and, therefore, more comprehensible and easier) alternative choices [what I remember/my memories] of [the time when I was a child], leaving us with a more unmarked and common-sense wording more accessible to the cognition of a lower-level reader (such as a native-speaking teenager in secondary school, a non-native intermediate and upper-intermediate language learner, etc).

The GM misfortune deploys a metaphorical wording for which a suggested congruent alternative choice can be what made me unfortunate and miserable. The GM the visions can be conceived of, in a more congruent domain, as the pictures and dreams. The metaphorical wording extensive usefulness can have extensively useful as its non-metaphorical alternative. Finally, the GM reflections can have thinking deeply as a suggested congruent variant.

Example 2 of IGM within the novel

-          A new light seemed to dawn upon my mind, and bounding with joy, I communicated my discovery to my father.

Suggested unpacking for a congruent version:

-          My mind seemed to have been lit up by something new and unknown, and bounding as a result of being overjoyed, I communicated what I had discovered to my father.

Table 2

IGM within the novel

In this sample, the sentence A new light seemed to dawn upon my mind seems to be using light metaphorically. A suggested congruent wording for it can be My mind seemed to have been lit up by something new and unknown in which the Thing light acts as the metaphorical realization for the process type, in the passive voice in this instance, lit up. The phrase bounding with joy is, in fact, metaphorical for bounding as a result of being overjoyed. These types of GM are what Farahani and Hadidi (2008) refer to as Prepositional Grammatical Metaphors in which the two prepositions in and with play very prominent roles, conveying the senses of because or while. Finally, my discovery is a metaphorical wording for the alternative realization what I had discovered.

In all these cases, the congruent realization, as can be easily seen, lends itself to smoother understanding where, a reader (native or non-native) who is at a lower stage of linguistic development will have less trouble processing the congruent than the metaphorical. In each case, we suggest (unpack the GM) an alternative non-metaphorical realization, a more unmarked and common-sense wording, which is more accessible to the cognition of a lower-level reader (such as a native-speaking teenager in secondary school, a non-native intermediate and upper-intermediate language learner, etc).

At this point, the analysis of two instances of the Grammatical Metaphor occurring in the script of the movie adapted from the novel in 1931 is presented. Similarly to the above, this involves locating the nominalized ideational grammatical metaphors and suggesting possible non-metaphorical (congruent) alternatives for them, along with further exploratory analyses following the tables.

Example 1 of IGM within the movie script

-          Mr. Carl Laemmle feels it would be a little unkind to present this picture without just a word of friendly warning.

A suggested unpacking for the congruent version:

-          Mr. Carl Laemmle feels it would be a little unkind to present this picture without speaking any word to warn people in a friendly way.

Table 3

Sample 1 of IGM within the movie script

Example 2 of IGM within the movie script

-          A man of science, who sought to create a man after his own image, without reckoning upon God.

A suggested congruent would go something like:

-          A scientist man, who sought to create a man after he imaged it, without reckoning upon God.

Table 4

Sample 2 of IGM within the movie script

In the 4200-word corpus analyzed for the movie adaptation of the novel Frankenstein studied here, there were around 62 instances of GM emerging upon analysis. This was the number of GM instances that three times of manual and dedicated analysis – involving the search for agnation, nominalization and paraphrase, to make sure about the status of the GM – brought out. To be on the safe side and round up the number, we assume there were 70 instances of GM in the cinematic adaptation of the novel Frankenstein.

In the 4200-word corpus analyzed for the actual purposively sampled pages of the novel Frankenstein studied here, there were above 330 instances of GM emerging upon analysis. This was the number of GM instances that three times of dedicated, qualitative and manual analysis – involving the search for agnation, nominalization and paraphrase, to make sure about the status of the GM – brought out.

There was a noticeable difference between the frequencies of the occurrence of the GM in the written corpus than that in the cinematic one. Therefore, the answer to the first research question was affirmative. To answer the second research question, and to find out the implications of the findings it must be noted that during the cross-medium shift, some items might be left ignored or changed or completely deleted in adaptation. In producing a cinematic adaptation based on a novel, written language shifts, by necessity and by nature, to the spoken type. In addition to the awareness of the screenplay writer of the nature of literary tools or other items like GM, it is possible to preserve these items (GM) of the mother text in its cinematic adaptation.

Discussion

The findings of the present study regarding more frequent use of  GM in the written corpus can be explained in the light of the fact that the language of the movie was different in style from the one used in the novel. It seems that the movie, no matter how literary in intention, was constrained by generic and contextual forces, including the pressure of the audio-visual medium, and the commensurate need to be less linguistically ambiguous and complex, in intrinsically characteristic and obvious attempts to win the audience’s attention and approval.

In line with Taverniers (2009) and Ravelli (1999), metaphoricity is always a relative and relational concept; something is always metaphorical to a degree, in proportion to something else. A choice in the paradigm is a metaphorical realization with respect to something else in the paradigm that could have been chosen, and would have been less metaphorical and more in tune with the congruent domain(s) of reality.

In the same vein, it could be argued that the GMs in the movie analyzed here seem to be, due to the generic and contextual reasons mentioned above, less metaphorical and more congruent than the ones in the novel. That is, if one were to come up with a scale of congruency, similar to what Taverniers (1999) refers to, the GMs in the movie would be placed at and assigned a lower metaphorical status than those in the novel.

The findings of the present study were in line with the previous studies regarding the role of nominalization in different textual genres. As Briones et al. (2003) found, nominalizations in general and grammatical metaphors in particular are essential resources for constructing formal discourse, so they should be taken into account in scientific writing courses. Similarly Jalilfar et al. (2014) concluded that a typical characteristic of formal discourse is the use of nominalization, where processes and properties are metaphorically reconstrued as nouns. For this reason, nominalization, as a major category of grammatical metaphor, is regarded as a proper linguistic feature for characterizing formal and written discourse. The occurrence of nominalization greatly increases the general information load the clause states. Thus, grammatical metaphor is fundamental and ideal for the written genre which places a premium on the transmission of information in an economical and compendious way (Kazemian, et al. 2013).

In the analyses, In the present study, another role of grammatical metaphor and the possible alternative congruent realizations for each case of GM manifested themselves: GM as a cognitive pathway along which young learners, native and non-native, make sense of reality in gradual degrees of increasing metaphorical or non-metaphorical language. Reality is presented metaphorically, but in each case, the mind should be able to adapt to it congruently too, if the cognitive need arises.

But over and beyond the above, in order to explain the differential deployment of GM in the novel and its movie adaptation, one would also do well to resort to the following features of GM that we have managed to extrapolate from the literature on GM and what research has so far molded into theory; as will be seen, and as an important systemic fact, these properties are deeply intertwined, so that, most of the time, the presence of one implicates the presence of others:

1. GM allows for the textual phenomenon of Referring; it enables entities that were NOT Thing (like processes and epithets) to refer to each other. A simple example would be the metaphorical his anger made me very sad, as opposed to the congruent he was angry and this made me very sad. The fact that within the same corpus size, we have significantly more instances of GM in the novel may be ascribable to the fact that in a literary prose work such as Frankenstein, the writer makes ample recourse to metaphorically turning Processes and Epithets into Things, in order to be able to talk about and refer to them as if they were Things. Taking sample 4.1.1. as an example:

-          I feel exquisite pleasure in dwelling on the recollections of childhood, before misfortune had tainted my mind and changed its bright visions of extensive usefulness into gloomy and narrow reflections upon self.

One can see how frequently the writer is using this discursive property of Grammatical Metaphor towards coalescing clausal elements that are NOT Things into Things, i.e. semantically cross-mapping them onto the status of a Thing, so that referring to them in a distilled (see below) and compressed way is made possible (also see Farahani&Hadidi, 2008; for a better look at the example above, consult 4.1.1 and the accompanying table). 

1. GM touches off another semantic property referred to as Expanding in the literature. When GM occurs, a new universe of reality opens up by the action of metaphor (variously known in the literature as Text Worlds, universe of discourse, the world spoken of, episode, etc; see also below). It is in sync with such a freshly articulated and remapped cognitive reality that GM manages the textual and semantic resources to expand the meaning potential available to the components of such a metaphorically fresh universe of discourse to be talked about. If you compare example 4.1.1 above with its congruent version, you’ll see how this semantic and cognitive property is brought off through GM. 
2. Another property of GM mentioned in the literature is its capacity of Technicalizing. This is markedly the territory of scientific language, the genre originally and perhaps more deeply associated with the phenomenon of GM. This role of GM invokes its ability to compress scientific concepts into smaller phrasal (and nominal) forms for the purposes of coming up with fixed and static technical terms that can be easily talked about and referred to. There would seem to be little allowance made in literary prose for this property of GM. But any talk of GM in scientific language would bring in this important attribute (see Farahani&Hadidi, 2008).
3. Another property of GM mostly associated with scientific language is Rationalizing. This is similar to technicalizing, but is different in that rationalizing refers to the recourse made to GM to nail and hammer down scientific concepts into nominalized forms to be able to rationally reason about them in line with more rationalized frameworks of scientific argument (which are made possible by timely use of GM). It seems that prose fiction also makes use of this property; for instance, when the author is using a character’s voice to articulate his own opinion on life and make a momentous statement, some rationalizing seems to be at work when such GM occurs. For instance, when Frankenstein’s monster says:

-          Polluted by crimes and torn by the bitterest remorse, where can I find rest but in death?

The writer is making use of 4 GMs that carry many effects, one of which is the rationalizing voice of the author herself, making a momentous statement on life as she sees it.

1. Distillation is another property of GM. As mentioned above, many concepts and meanings are brought into one form, are distilled, in the form of GM.   
2. GM allows reasoning; it makes for another move forward in the argument. This argument can be scientific or otherwise. This aspect of GM should be explored in relation to cohesion in text, which can be a suggested and interesting area for further research. The reasoning capacity of GM is similar in nature to Referring and Rationalizing, which means that cohesion can be considered relevant to all three. Such a link conveys the possibility to explore further avenues of research to study these links. Yet again, as an explanation of the significant difference in deployment of GM between the novel and the movie in the same corpus size, the novel seems to need this property in its GMs more than the movie too; generically, cognitively, and discursively speaking, the novel seems to call for more metaphorical space, resources and remapping to refer to images, thoughts and ideas, expand images, thoughts and ideas, distil thoughts and ideas, and reason about images and ideas more than what the movie needs.    
3. In the literature, GM is seen as a textual tool that serves to cater to the importance of the management of the textual meta-function. Textual metaphor, basically, has not been dealt with as extensively as ideational and interpersonal metaphors have. But just as with cohesion which is a system on the textual plane, GM has implications on the textual layer of meaning. It changes the Theme/Rheme and Given/New status and arrangement of elements in the clause, making other noun phrases enter into those slots, just as it makes them available for being ‘referred to’, when they were not so in the congruent. The novel being a more extended text than a movie script (which was 4200 words, according to which we chose a commensurate corpus size in the novel), it is obvious that these textual shifts brought about by GM should occur more frequently in the novel than in the script, which is a less extended more dialogic form of discourse and textual development.       
4. The literature on GM talks about another property of it in terms of creating a universe of things. This was discussed above in number 2, expanding. 
5. This is a universe of reality that is stable, bounded, and determinate. GM renders this universe manageable and referable by way of the fact that this universe is now: a) stable, i.e. it is not like processes, circumstances or epithets that are transient, slippery, elusive and subject to the changes of the moment; b) bounded: there are now visible and tangible boundaries demarcating the universe speakers can talk about, which could be another semantic and cognitive force processes, circumstances and epithets are cross-coupled into a GM, and c) determinate: which is another way of saying that this universe created by GM is bounded, but also precise, settled and categorical. These three properties go hand in hand with GM serving to manage the development of the textual metafunction mentioned above, and obviously more present and needed in the discourse of a novel than its movie adaptation. 
6. GM is also seen in the literature to lead to a universe of relations between things. With GM, in line with a universe of reality mentioned above, circumstances, processes and epithets that could not tie together in a universe can now enter into semantic and syntactic relations by virtue of being metaphorically nominalized. This is, of course, expected in a novel more than in a movie adaptation.   
7. GM is theorized to involve stratal tension. This means that the cognitively oriented semantic configuration formed in the stratum of semantics is now in tension with the stratum of lexico-grammar because of the semantic cross-mapping and cross-coupling inherent in GM.  
8. GM is also said to accompany compound semantic choice. When a process, epithet or circumstance become a Thing, there is still something of their original flavour of semantic content and role present in the GM. Thus, they are more than the sum of their parts, more than just a Thing now. This is an interesting property of GM that suggesting congruent versions can bring out. 

The main pedagogical implications of this research are increasing the knowledge of teachers and English language instructors with regard to the role of GM in making metaphorical forms in different texts like that of the novel, increasing knowledge of how to approach the teaching of the skill of reading and writing in upper-intermediate and intermediate classes, since, as we know, in the literature, there are countless references to the absolute necessity of the teacher of a foreign language to be a discourse analyst. It seems that without awareness of systemic functional linguistics and the general picture painted by it of language, there cannot be much in the way of hoping to understand language as discourse that teachers need to be equipped with. Likewise, studying GM, for instance, helps English language learners to identify congruent and metaphorical forms in different texts and also helps them to understand what the writer exactly wants to say. It will also, hopefully, help follow-up researchers who are interested in serious exploration of GM.

Essentially, one of the main pedagogical implications of the present research and studies of the same nature is to smooth the path and supply a tool and outlook for formal writings and those who tend to pursue GM in their careers as scientific writers, students and researchers.

Next, many students need the opportunity to learn how to read or probably how to write the scientific genres, so that they may effectively participate in scientific processes that this discourse is used for. Then, texts with a high degree of GM tend to be considered prestigious, abstract, objective, academic and formal in scientific contexts. Moreover, learning and knowing about GM and IGM can also shed light on the fluent and smooth process of translation to some extent, because translation requires students to possess high language ability and excellent command of English, such as GM and IGM. Furthermore, IGM helps students to reduce the number of clauses in their writing and compact more information into each nominal group. Therefore, it boosts the beauty of the clause and absorbs the reader's attention to pursue the writing.

 This study and its results will hopefully be of some helpful insight for other researchers to find new avenues of research in the realm of systemic functional linguistics, particularly GM. Follow-up researchers can explore the L2 properties of GM we brought together above, and their presence in the GMs deployed in instances of other genres. This will yield interesting and useful insights into the textual operations of GM. Such studies are still very much lacking in regard to literary styles and literary discourse. The use of GM in literature is, in general, an under researched area, one that, however, could have countless potential insights into the nature of language and discourse, not only in literature but in non-literary genres as well.    

References

Bhatia, V. (1993)  Analyzing genre. Language use in professional settings. London: Longman.

Briones, S., Fortuny, L., Sastre, S., & de Pocovi, M. B. (2003). Grammatical metaphors in scientific English. The ESPecialist, 24(2), 131-142.

Galve, G. I. (1998). The textual interplay of grammatical metaphor on the nominalization occurring in written medical English.Journal of Pragmatics, 30, 363-385.

Halliday, M. A. K. (1985).  An introduction to functional grammar (1^st Ed.). London: Edward Arnold.

Halliday, M. A. K. (1994). An introduction to functional grammar (2^nd  Ed.). London: Edward Arnold.

Halliday, M. A. K. (1996). Functional description.Theory in practice. (Current issues  in linguistic theory).Amesterdam: Benjamins.

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Biodata

Nasser Ghafoori holds Ph.D. in Teaching English as a Foreign Language (TEFL). He is assistant professor in IAUT. He has published several articles in international journals and has presented in many local and international conferences. His fields of interest include applied linguistics, discourse analysis, language teaching and testing.

Sholeh Seyedvalilu has got her master degree in English Language Teaching (TEFL) from IAUT. She has been teaching English in many English language institutes and she is considering establishing an English-Persian bilingual elementary school in Tabriz. Her fields of interest are applied linguistics and discourse analysis.