A synthesis of research on grammatical metaphor: meta-data and content analysis

Adopting the methodology of research synthesis, the present study takes stock of primary research studies on grammatical metaphor (GM) within systemic-functional linguistics and maps the research landscape since Halliday proposed this concept in 1985. Based on the data from 118 primary studies, we first report on the publication and methodological features of these studies. We then conduct content analysis, which is based on five domains of interest, viz. language description, register variation, education, language comparison, and translation. Major findings are: (i) The type of GM in these studies is dominated by ideational GM; less attention has been given to interpersonal GM; (ii) Textual GM has emerged as a heated issue recently. (iii) While education represents the most studied field, there remains considerable research space in other domains. Finally, some theoretical issues and implications for future directions are highlighted.