Michael Halliday
Encyclopedia
Michael Alexander Kirkwood Halliday (often M.A.K. Halliday) (born 13 April 1925, Leeds, Yorkshire, England) is a British linguist
who developed an internationally influential model of language, the systemic functional linguistic
model. His grammatical descriptions go by the name of systemic functional grammar
(SFG).
. He then lived for three years in China, where he studied under Luo Changpei
at Peking University
and under Wang Li at Lingnan University
, before returning to take a PhD in Chinese Linguistics at Cambridge
. Having taught Mandarin
for a number of years, he changed his field of specialisation to linguistics, and developed systemic functional grammar, elaborating on the foundations laid by his British teacher J. R. Firth
and a group of European linguists of the early 20th century, the Prague school. His seminal paper on this model was published in 1961. He became the Professor of Linguistics at the University of London
in 1965. In 1976 he moved to Australia as Foundation Professor of Linguistics at the University of Sydney
, where he remained until he retired. The impact of his work extends beyond linguistics into the study of visual and multimodal communication, and he is considered to have founded the field of social semiotics
. He has worked in various regions of language study, both theoretical and applied, and has been especially concerned with applying the understanding of the basic principles of language to the theory and practices of education. He received the status of emeritus professor of the University of Sydney and Macquarie University
, Sydney, in 1987. With his seminal lecture "New Ways of Meaning: the Challenge to Applied Linguistics" held at the AILA conference in Saloniki (1990), he became one of the pioneers of eco-critical discourse analysis (a discipline of ecolinguistics
).
. Halliday's notion of language functions, or "metafunctions", became part of his general linguistic theory.
But the final volume in his 10 volumes is called Language in society, reflecting his theoretical and methodological connection to language as first and foremost concerned with "acts of meaning". This volume contains many of his early papers, in which he argues for a deep connection between language and social structure, in which language said not merely to reflect social structure. For instance, he writes:
Halliday (1975) identifies seven functions that language has for children in their early years. For Halliday, children are motivated to develop language because it serves certain purposes or functions for them. The first four functions help the child to satisfy physical, emotional and social needs. Halliday calls them instrumental, regulatory, interactional, and personal functions.
The next three functions are heuristic, imaginative, and representational, all helping the child to come to terms with his or her environment.
According to Halliday, as the child moves into the mother tongue, these functions give way to the generalized "metafunctions" of language. In this process, in between the two levels of the simple protolanguage system (the "expression" and "content" pairing of the Saussure's sign), an additional level of content is inserted. Instead of one level of content, there are now two: lexicogrammar and semantics. The "expression" plane also now consists of two levels: phonetics and phonology.
Halliday's work represents a competing viewpoint to the formalist approach of Noam Chomsky
. Halliday's concern is with "naturally occurring language in actual contexts of use" in a large typological range of languages whereas Chomsky is concerned only with the formal properties of languages such as English, which he thinks are indicative of the nature of what he calls Universal Grammar
. While Chomsky's search for Universal Grammar could be considered an essentially platonic endeavor (i.e. concerned with idealized forms), Halliday's orientation to the study of natural language has been compared to Darwin's method
Linguistics
Linguistics is the scientific study of human language. Linguistics can be broadly broken into three categories or subfields of study: language form, language meaning, and language in context....
who developed an internationally influential model of language, the systemic functional linguistic
Systemic linguistics
Systemic functional linguistics is an approach to linguistics that considers language as a particular kind of system, a social semiotics system. It was developed by Michael Halliday, who took the notion of system from his teacher, J R Firth...
model. His grammatical descriptions go by the name of systemic functional grammar
Systemic functional grammar
Systemic functional grammar , a component of systemic functional linguistics , is a form of grammatical description originally developed by Michael Halliday in a career spanning more than 50 years. It is part of a social semiotic approach to language called systemic-functional linguistics...
(SFG).
Biography
Halliday was born and raised in England. He took a BA Honours degree in Modern Chinese Language and Literature (Mandarin) at the University of LondonUniversity of London
-20th century:Shortly after 6 Burlington Gardens was vacated, the University went through a period of rapid expansion. Bedford College, Royal Holloway and the London School of Economics all joined in 1900, Regent's Park College, which had affiliated in 1841 became an official divinity school of the...
. He then lived for three years in China, where he studied under Luo Changpei
Luo Changpei
Luo Changpei was a Chinese linguist. He made important contributions to the study of historical Chinese phonology. He was also a pioneer of the modern studies of Chinese dialects and of non-Chinese languages in China....
at Peking University
Peking University
Peking University , colloquially known in Chinese as Beida , is a major research university located in Beijing, China, and a member of the C9 League. It is the first established modern national university of China. It was founded as Imperial University of Peking in 1898 as a replacement of the...
and under Wang Li at Lingnan University
Lingnan University (Guangzhou)
Lingnan University in Canton, Kwangtung Province, China , was a private university established by a group of American missionaries in 1888. At its founding it was named Canton Christian College .It was incorporated into Chung Shan University in 1953...
, before returning to take a PhD in Chinese Linguistics at Cambridge
Cambridge
The city of Cambridge is a university town and the administrative centre of the county of Cambridgeshire, England. It lies in East Anglia about north of London. Cambridge is at the heart of the high-technology centre known as Silicon Fen – a play on Silicon Valley and the fens surrounding the...
. Having taught Mandarin
Chinese language
The Chinese language is a language or language family consisting of varieties which are mutually intelligible to varying degrees. Originally the indigenous languages spoken by the Han Chinese in China, it forms one of the branches of Sino-Tibetan family of languages...
for a number of years, he changed his field of specialisation to linguistics, and developed systemic functional grammar, elaborating on the foundations laid by his British teacher J. R. Firth
J. R. Firth
John Rupert Firth , commonly known as J. R. Firth, was an English linguist. He was Professor of English at the University of the Punjab from 1919-1928...
and a group of European linguists of the early 20th century, the Prague school. His seminal paper on this model was published in 1961. He became the Professor of Linguistics at the University of London
University of London
-20th century:Shortly after 6 Burlington Gardens was vacated, the University went through a period of rapid expansion. Bedford College, Royal Holloway and the London School of Economics all joined in 1900, Regent's Park College, which had affiliated in 1841 became an official divinity school of the...
in 1965. In 1976 he moved to Australia as Foundation Professor of Linguistics at the University of Sydney
University of Sydney
The University of Sydney is a public university located in Sydney, New South Wales. The main campus spreads across the suburbs of Camperdown and Darlington on the southwestern outskirts of the Sydney CBD. Founded in 1850, it is the oldest university in Australia and Oceania...
, where he remained until he retired. The impact of his work extends beyond linguistics into the study of visual and multimodal communication, and he is considered to have founded the field of social semiotics
Social semiotics
Social semiotics is a branch of the field of semiotics which investigates human signifying practices in specific social and cultural circumstances, and which tries to explain meaning-making as a social practice. Semiotics, as originally defined by Ferdinand de Saussure, is "the science of the life...
. He has worked in various regions of language study, both theoretical and applied, and has been especially concerned with applying the understanding of the basic principles of language to the theory and practices of education. He received the status of emeritus professor of the University of Sydney and Macquarie University
Macquarie University
Macquarie University is an Australian public teaching and research university located in Sydney, with its main campus situated in Macquarie Park. Founded in 1964 by the New South Wales Government, it was the third university to be established in the metropolitan area of Sydney...
, Sydney, in 1987. With his seminal lecture "New Ways of Meaning: the Challenge to Applied Linguistics" held at the AILA conference in Saloniki (1990), he became one of the pioneers of eco-critical discourse analysis (a discipline of ecolinguistics
Ecolinguistics
Ecolinguistics emerged in the 1990’s as a new paradigm of linguistic research which took into account not only the social context in which language is embedded, but also the ecological context in which societies are embedded...
).
Contributions to linguistics
Halliday describes himself first and foremost as a grammarian. His first major work on the subject of grammar was "Categories of the theory of grammar", published in the journal Word in 1961. In this paper, he argued for four "fundamental categories" for the theory of grammar: "unit", "structure", "class" and "system". These categories he argued were "of the highest order of abstraction", but were defended as those necessary to "make possible a coherent account of what grammar is and of its place in language" In articulating the category 'unit', Halliday proposed the notion of a 'rank scale'. The units of grammar formed a "hierarchy", a scale from "largest" to "smallest" which he proposed as: "sentence", "clause", "group/phrase", "word" and "morpheme".Halliday defined structure as "likeness between events in successivity" and as "an arrangement of elements ordered in places'. Halliday rejects a view of structure as "strings of classes, such as nominal group + verbalgroup + nominal group" among which there is just a kind of mechanical solidarity" describing it instead as "configurations of functions, where the solidarity is organic."Grammar as "systemic"
This early paper shows that the notion of "system" has been part of Halliday's theory from its origins. Halliday explains this preoccupation in the following way: "It seemed to me that explanations of linguistic phenomena needed to be sought in relationships among systems rather than among structures - in what I once called "deep paradigms" - since these were essentially where speakers made their choices". Halliday's "systemic grammar" is a semiotic account of grammar, because of this orientation to choice. Every linguistic act involves choice, and choices are made on many scales. Systemic grammars draw on system networks as their primary representation tool as a consequence. For instance, a major clause must display some structure that is the formal realization of a choice from the system of "voice", i.e. it must be either "middle" or "effective", where "effective" leads to the further choice of "operative" (otherwise known as 'active') or "receptive" (otherwise known as "passive").Grammar as "functional"
Halliday's grammar is not just "systemic", but "systemic functional". He argues that the explanation of how language works "needed to be grounded in a functional analysis, since language had evolved in the process of carrying out certain critical functions as human beings interacted with their...'eco-social' environment". Halliday's early grammatical descriptions of English, called "Notes on Transitivity and Theme in English - Parts 1-3" include reference to "four components in the grammar of English representing four functions that the language as a communication system is required to carry out: the experiential, the logical, the discoursal and the speech functional or interpersonal". The "discoursal" function was re-named the "textual function". In this discussion of functions of language, he draws on the work of Bühler and MalinowskiBronislaw Malinowski
Bronisław Kasper Malinowski was a Polish-born- British-naturalized anthropologist, one of the most important 20th-century anthropologists.From 1910, Malinowski studied exchange and economics at the London School of Economics under Seligman and Westermarck, analysing patterns of exchange in...
. Halliday's notion of language functions, or "metafunctions", became part of his general linguistic theory.
But the final volume in his 10 volumes is called Language in society, reflecting his theoretical and methodological connection to language as first and foremost concerned with "acts of meaning". This volume contains many of his early papers, in which he argues for a deep connection between language and social structure, in which language said not merely to reflect social structure. For instance, he writes:
Studies in child language development
In enumerating his claims about the trajectory of children's language development, Halliday eschews the metaphor of "acquisition", in which language is considered a static product which the child takes on when sufficient exposure to natural language enables "parameter setting". By contrast, for Halliday what the child develops is a "meaning potential". Learning language is Learning how to mean, the name of his well known early study of a child's language development.Halliday (1975) identifies seven functions that language has for children in their early years. For Halliday, children are motivated to develop language because it serves certain purposes or functions for them. The first four functions help the child to satisfy physical, emotional and social needs. Halliday calls them instrumental, regulatory, interactional, and personal functions.
- Instrumental: This is when the child uses language to express their needs (e.g.'Want juice')
- Regulatory: This is where language is used to tell others what to do (e.g. 'Go away')
- Interactional: Here language is used to make contact with others and form relationships (e.g. 'Love you, mummy')
- Personal: This is the use of language to express feelings, opinions, and individual identity (e.g. 'Me good girl')
The next three functions are heuristic, imaginative, and representational, all helping the child to come to terms with his or her environment.
- Heuristic: This is when language is used to gain knowledge about the environment (e.g. 'What the tractor doing?')
- Imaginative: Here language is used to tell stories and jokes, and to create an imaginary environment.
- Representational: The use of language to convey facts and information.
According to Halliday, as the child moves into the mother tongue, these functions give way to the generalized "metafunctions" of language. In this process, in between the two levels of the simple protolanguage system (the "expression" and "content" pairing of the Saussure's sign), an additional level of content is inserted. Instead of one level of content, there are now two: lexicogrammar and semantics. The "expression" plane also now consists of two levels: phonetics and phonology.
Halliday's work represents a competing viewpoint to the formalist approach of Noam Chomsky
Noam Chomsky
Avram Noam Chomsky is an American linguist, philosopher, cognitive scientist, and activist. He is an Institute Professor and Professor in the Department of Linguistics & Philosophy at MIT, where he has worked for over 50 years. Chomsky has been described as the "father of modern linguistics" and...
. Halliday's concern is with "naturally occurring language in actual contexts of use" in a large typological range of languages whereas Chomsky is concerned only with the formal properties of languages such as English, which he thinks are indicative of the nature of what he calls Universal Grammar
Universal grammar
Universal grammar is a theory in linguistics that suggests that there are properties that all possible natural human languages have.Usually credited to Noam Chomsky, the theory suggests that some rules of grammar are hard-wired into the brain, and manifest themselves without being taught...
. While Chomsky's search for Universal Grammar could be considered an essentially platonic endeavor (i.e. concerned with idealized forms), Halliday's orientation to the study of natural language has been compared to Darwin's method
Selected works
- Halliday, M.A.K. (1973). Explorations in the functions of language, London, Edward Arnold
- Halliday M.A.K. (1975). Learning how to mean, London, Edward Arnold
- Halliday, M.A.K., and C.M.I.M. Matthiessen (2004). An introduction to functional grammar, 3d ed. London, Arnold
- Halliday, M.A.K. (2002). Linguistic studies of text and discourse, Jonathan Webster (ed.), Continuum International Publishing
- Halliday, M.A.K. (2003). On Language and Linguistics, Jonathan Webster (ed.), Continuum International Publishing
- Halliday, M.A.K. (2005). On grammar, Jonathan Webster (ed.), Continuum International Publishing
- Halliday, M.A.K. (2006). The language of science, Jonathan Webster (ed.), Continuum International Publishing
- Halliday, M.A.K. (2006). Computational and quantitative studies, Jonathan Webster (ed.), Continuum International Publishing
- Halliday, M.A.K., and Greaves, W.S. (2008). Intonation in the Grammar of English, London, Equinox.
See also
- Ruqaiya HasanRuqaiya HasanRuqaiya Hasan is a professor of linguistics who has taught and held visiting positions at various universities in England, America and Australia. Her last appointment was at Macquarie University, Australia, from where she retired as Emeritus Professor in 1994...
- C.M.I.M. MatthiessenC.M.I.M. MatthiessenChristian M.I.M. Matthiessen is a Swedish-born linguist and a leading figure in the systemic functional linguistics school, having authored or co-authored more than 100 books, refereed journal articles, and papers in refereed conference proceedings, with contributions to three television programs...
- Thematic equativeThematic equativeIn systemic functional grammar, a thematic equative is a thematic resource in which two or more separate elements in a clause are grouped together to form a single constituent of the theme-plus-rheme structure...
- Cline (linguistics)Cline (linguistics)In linguistics, a cline is a scale of continuous gradation. While cline is most frequently invoked as a general concept, it has also developed specialized uses in various linguistic sub-disciplines.-Cline of grammaticalisation:...
which notes Halliday's concept "cline of instantiation" - Nominal groupNominal group (language)In systemic functional grammar , a nominal group is a group of words which expresses an entity. A "nominal group" is widely regarded as synonymous to noun phrase in other grammatical models, although Halliday and some of his followers draw a theoretical distinction between the terms group and phrase...
External links and references
- Systemic functional linguistics
- Halliday and SFL Overview
- Interview of Halliday by G Kress, R Hasan and JR Martin, May 1986
- Halliday's Collected Papers in 10 volumes
- Michael Halliday's 2010 talk at UBC
- Halliday, M.A.K. Explorations in the Functions of Language. London: Edward Arnold, 1973.
- Halliday, M.A.K., and C.M.I.M. Matthiessen. An Introduction to Functional Grammar. 3d ed. London: Arnold, 2004.
- A beginners simplified introduction to Systemic Functional Grammar for teachers