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Title Grammatical Metaphor in Academic Writing of Undergraduate Students of English: A Corpus-Assisted Case Study

Author(s) Riaz Ahmed

Abstract In Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL), grammatical metaphor (GM) is considered as a primary resource for the creation of condensed and compact meaning in academic discourse. Students of English at university level require awareness of this fundamental linguistic tool. Adopting the theoretical framework of SFL, the present study is an attempt to quantify the deployment of Ideational Grammatical Metaphor and different nominalization forms in the academic writing of undergraduate students of English. Another aim is the description of the problems in the use of GM traceable in their academic writing. Working in the theoretical framework of SFL, I have employed the approach of a mixed-method study in which both numerical and descriptive data analysis tools are used. After the collection of handwritten essays in response to the given prompt from 81 students in BS final semester, a corpus was constructed. Starting with manual reading that is followed by computational analysis of the corpus, I have found that the sample population shows slight growth in their repertoire of paradigmatic choices offered in the form of ideational grammatical metaphor, especially nominalization. Furthermore, the students’ metaphorical control is still at intermediate stage which constraints the development of their argumentation. Therefore, suitable pedagogical interventions are suggested.

Type Thesis/Dissertation MS

Faculty Languages

Department English

Language English

Publication Date 2022-02-15

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