Abstract: Grammatical metaphor is a kind of typical linguistic variant in language use, especially in written language. An abstract in the English research article, as a kind of distinctive register, is to report the objective research results as much as possible with limited words, to whose communicative goal’ realization and communicative efficiency’ improvement, the grammatical metaphor, especially nominalization in the abstract, makes great contribution. Analysis of grammatical metaphor in English abstracts in research articles is to deepen the understanding of the operating mechanism in this kind of discourse, which thus sheds lights on writing English abstracts and on the translation of Chinese abstracts in Chinese research articles into English in accordance with international academic standards.

Key words: functional grammar, grammatical metaphor, nominalization, linguistic variant, English abstract in research articles, communicative goal