Ideation: Grammatical Metaphor

Ngo, Hood, Martin, Painter, Smith & Zappavigna (2022: 13):

In terms of grammatical metaphor IDEATION allows us to formalise the difference between an occurrence figure realised congruently in grammar as a clause or metaphorically as a nominal group (Hao, 2020b):

(23) (congruent realisation of an occurrence Figure)

Her granuloma was spreading.

(24) (metaphorical realisation of an occurrence Figure)

The spread of her granuloma was upsetting her.

Blogger Comments:

To be clear, in the ideational semantics of Halliday & Matthiessen (1999), later rebranded in Hao (2020), the metaphor here lies in a happening figure being realised by a nominal group, in which the Process is realised as Thing, and the Actor as Qualifier, with the nominal group serving as the Phenomenon of a mental clause. In terms of the semantics, this sets up a Token-Value relation, such that the meaning of the metaphorical expression, an impinging Phenomenon, realises the meaning of the congruent expression, a happening.