GRAMMATICAL METAPHOR AND TRANSGRAMMATICAL SEMANTIC DOMAINS IN THE SOCIAL CONTEXTS OF LANGUAGE LEARNING IN INDONESIA

Abstract

The grammatical metaphor refers to the coding of meaning or experience in the manner as if the meaning or experience were coded by another lexicogrammatical coding.  Metaphorical representation implies that there are two manners of coding, namely the congruent or literal and incongruent or metaphorical coding.  Transgrammatical semantic domains extend meaning by a range of grammatical units.  Transgrammatical semantic coding implies that agnated meanings are realized by more than one grammatical unit. In this manner, grammatical metaphor representation inherently contains transgrammatical coding. This paper addresses grammatical metaphors commonly related to texts of academics, science, technology, bureaucracy, diplomacy, and politics which are very difficult for Indonesian students to understand and translate into good Bahasa Indonesia (BI). By applying knowledge or competence of grammatical metaphor and transgrammatical semantic domains, Indonesian students are expected to effectively learn the meaning of English text of academics, science, technology, bureaucracy, diplomacy, and politics and to translate the various kinds of texts into good BI.