Misrepresenting Data And Grammatical Metaphor

Martin & Rose (2007: 109-10):

Grammatical metaphors on the other hand involve a transference of meaning from one kind of element to another kind. A simple example in Helena’s story is the process of marrying, which is reconstrued as a quality married and as a thing marriage.

Blogger Comments:

[1] To be clear, this is only one type of grammatical metaphor, elemental metaphor (Halliday & Matthiessen 1999: 244-9).  More broadly, grammatical metaphor also involves the realisation of a semantic sequence as a clause or group (instead of a clause complex), the realisation of a semantic figure as group or word (instead of a clause), and the realisation of a semantic element as a word (instead of a group).  Most importantly, grammatical metaphor is a junctional construct, embodying the meanings of both the metaphorical and congruent wordings.

[2] To be clear, here Martin & Rose misrepresent the data, since 'marry' is nowhere reconstrued as a Quality, as demonstrated by the five instances of the lexical item in the original text:

1. We even spoke about marriage.
2. An extremely short marriage to someone else failed all because I married to forget.
3. After my unsuccessful marriage, I met another policeman.
4. For some it has been so traumatic that marriages have broken up.

More importantly, the authors fail to recognise the the nature of the metaphors involved, which might be unpacked a little along the following lines:

1. figure ('us getting married') metaphorically realised as nominal group (marriage);
2. figure ('I was married to someone else very briefly') metaphorically realised as nominal group (An extremely short marriage to someone else);
3. sequence ('I married but we did not succeed to remain together') metaphorically realised as nominal group (my unsuccessful marriage);
4. sequence ('people got married and later they separated') metaphorically realised as clause (that marriages have broken up).