Prof. Yi Zhang, Northwestern Polytechnical University, China

Yi Zhang, Professor, doctoral supervisor, School of Foreign Studies, Northwestern Polytechnical University. As the first and correspondent author, she has published 87 research articles in Chinese and International journals. She organized and accomplished 7 national projects and is the co-leader of an 8-year fund program sponsored by Linneau-Palm foundation, Sweden. In 2014, she obtained "National Award for Teaching Achievement" rewarded by Chinese Ministry of Education. Due to her achievements in teaching and research, she wins the governmental honor of the Provincial Distinguished Teacher. She is a member of Chinese Association of English for Academic Purposes, member of Shaanxi Advisory Board for Intercollegiate Programme Communities, the assessor and reviewer of Humanities and Social Science Foundation Projects of the Ministry of Education. Her research area includes Systemic Functional Linguistics, Academic Discourse Analysis and Teacher Education.

Title: Metaphor in Academic Discourse

Abstract: This study mainly discussed four types of metaphor in academic discourse, namely ideational grammatical metaphor, mood metaphor, conceptual metaphor as well as modality metaphor. It focused on the classification of metaphor and identification of these different types of metaphor. Corpora were set up and 210 research articles were studied in details. Results show the context of academic discourse specifically the tenor evokes cognitive mechanism of nominalization grammatical metaphor and the form of nominalization grammatical metaphor helps to create coherence of academic discourse. Mood metaphor demonstrate its interactional functions of positioning authorial stance and constructing reader engagement. Conceptual metaphor performs persuasive functions in linguistic academic discourse. Modality metaphor in conclusion part functions as raising suggestions, enhancing negotiation, manifesting stance and increasing politeness.

Keywords: Metaphor, Academic Discourse, Function