The textual interplay of grammatical metaphor on the nominalizations occurring in written medical English

This paper aims to study the phenomenon of grammatical metaphor from the standpoint of intertextuality. In order to fulfil this aim, the paper focuses on the nominalizations and extensive nominal groups which characterize medical journal English by treating them as intertextual signals. For this reason, our analysis is oriented to the description of real examples from original articles published in well-known medical journals. Our general objective is, therefore, to establish grammatical metaphor in written texts for science and technology. In this connection, we make use of the theoretical framework of Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL), which is thus meant to underpin the application of analytical tools suitable to the study of the intertextuality that springs from the use of long nominal groups. We conclude that, as a resource for nominalization, grammatical metaphor can provide us with a clear illustration of the need for a dynamic perspective when approaching the language of science. For example, underprepared EST students (English for Science and Technology) can be taught to analyse the apparently static, obscure nominal groups that face them in specialized texts by moving in concrete directions: taking recourse to a cited work, digging out implicit intertextual text for themselves or under a trainer's supervision, and/or relying on the explicit intratextual signals which the lexicogrammar of many passages of nominalized text contain so that they can readily take the metaphor out where necessary.