About the Author

---

Hu Jian is an associate professor of linguistics at Beihang University. She holds a doctor's degree in English. Her ongoing area of research includes systemic functional linguistics and cognitive linguistics, with particular interest in interaction among semantics, lexicogrammar, and discourse functions. She is the author of a monograph on metaphors of modality and a series of journal articles on grammatical metaphor and functional studies of languages. She had worked as a researcher at Department of Cognitive Science, Case Western Reserve University, USA.