Text Technology: the Power-Tool of Grammatical Metaphor

Abstract

Texts are a form of technology: they do things. They construct meanings to achieve social purposes. In this paper I shall argue that the power-tool of the technology of text is grammatical metaphor. It is grammatical metaphor which is the key to constructing the meanings of those genres valued by the institutions of education, the professions and bureaucracy. Success in these institutions is linked to the mastery of grammatical metaphor as a tool for making meanings in reading and writing. It is therefore important for teachers, including ESL teachers, to become conscious of this tool, how it works, how to use it and how to exploit it for pedagogical purposes, so that all our students can master it, and the kinds of texts it enables them to construct.