Metaphor is a word from the ancient Greek verb “metapherein”。 In fact, people frequently employ metaphors, whether consciously or unconsciously, in our daily life。 Metaphors have a great place in the language, which can’t be ignored。 According to Halliday’s An Introduction to Functional Grammar, he comments: “There is a strong grammatical element in rhetorical transference; and once we have recognized this we find that there is also such a thing as grammatical forms although often entailing some lexical variations as well ” (1994:34)。 He thus puts forward a concept –grammatical metaphor。 Interpersonal metaphor belongs to the category of grammatical metaphor which is classified as three kinds, namely ideational metaphor, interpersonal metaphor and textual metaphor。 文献综述

Interpersonal metaphor is, further, classified as metaphors of modality and those of mood。 According to Halliday, interpersonal metaphor refers to the choices at modality and mood，which can lead to changes in meaning upon linguistic units。 However, so far lots of studies have been made on ideational metaphor and textual metaphor and there are no deeper or more comprehensive studies made on interpersonal metaphor。 And more importantly, there are scarce studies on business from the interpersonal metaphor’s perspective。 

The paper aims to study interpersonal grammatical metaphor in business negotiation English discourses so that we can have a good understanding of business negotiations and utilize it politely。 

Theoretically speaking, the application of interpersonal grammatical metaphors to business negotiation English discourses can enrich and broaden Systemic-Functional Grammar theories。 Furthermore, this thesis also has practical significance．Firstly, it can help business people have a deeper understanding of international business negotiations and better master his/her opponent’s opinions and attitudes．Secondly, it provides guidance for business negotiators to enhance their language competence---it can assist negotiators to employ appropriate forms to express their attitudes, make judgments, and achieve their expected goals。 Lastly, it is also very significant to business English teaching in colleges, for it can provide some guidance and insights for teachers and students in their teaching and learning process。

2。 Literature Review

2。1 The definition and history of grammatical metaphor

     Linguists and philosophers have begun to study metaphor which is taken as a subject of research ever since ancient times and it can go back to Greece more than 2400 years ago。 Then Aristotle and Plato held different attitudes towards metaphor。 Actually, their pergence has led to two opposite schools for metaphor studies。 The Aristotelian school considers metaphors as a figure of speech parasite on language while the Platonic school, by contrast，sees metaphor inseparable from language and thus is opposed to the distinction between poetic diction and everyday speech。 Halliday (1985:1994) who follows the Platonic school，constructs the grammatical metaphor。 

Halliday first began to study grammatical metaphor from the perspective of systemic functional linguistics。 He declares that: “…we find that there is also such a thing as grammatical metaphor, where the variation is essentially in the grammatical forms” (Halliday, 1985:320)．Grammatical metaphor thus gains stable status in systemic functional grammar and other linguistic branches。 Before Halliday no one had related metaphor to variations in grammatical forms．So it can be safely said it is because of Halliday that the real study on grammatical metaphor has begun．

According to Halliday’s three metafunctions, grammatical metaphors are classified into three kinds, namely ideational grammatical metaphor and interpersonal grammatical metaphor related to ideational function and interpersonal function in language respectively。 Ideational function corresponds to ideational metaphor; interpersonal function corresponds to interpersonal metaphor; textual metaphor corresponds to textual metaphor。来*自-优=尔,论:文+网www.chuibin.com