Michael Halliday

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Michael Halliday : biography

13 April 1925 –

Halliday’s first academic position was Assistant Lecturer in Chinese, at Cambridge University, from 1954 to 1958. In 1958 he moved to Edinburgh, where he was Lecturer in General Linguistics until 1960, and then Reader from 1960 to 1963. From 1963 to 1965, he was the director of the Communication Research Center at University College, London. During 1964, he was also Linguistic Society of America Professor, at Indiana University. From 1965 to 1971, he was Professor of Linguistics at UCL. In 1972–73 he was Fellow, Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioural Sciences, at Stanford, and in 1973–74 Professor of Linguistics at the University of Illinois. In 1974 he briefly moved back to Britain as Professor of Language and Linguistics at Essex University. In 1976 he moved to Australia as Foundation Professor of Linguistics at the University of Sydney, where he remained until he retired in 1987.Details of Halliday’s work history from "M.A.K. Halliday" in Keith Brown and Vivien Law (eds). 2007. Linguistics in Britain: Personal Histories. Publication of the Philological Society, 36, p. 117

Halliday 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.For example, Halliday, M.A.K. 2007. "Language and Education". Volume 9 in The Collected Works of M.A.K. Halliday. London: Continuum. He received the status of Emeritus Professor of the University of Sydney and Macquarie University, Sydney, in 1987. He has honorary doctorates from University of Birmingham (1987), York University (1988), the University of Athens (1995), Macquarie University (1996), and Lingnan University (1999)."M.A.K. Halliday", in Keith Brown and Vivien Law (eds). 2007. Linguistics in Britain: Personal Histories. Publication of the Philological Society, 36, p117

External links and references

  • 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.

Category:Systemic functional linguistics Category:Linguists from England Category:Alumni of the University of London Category:Academics of the University of London Category:Australian linguists Category:Semanticists Category:Australian academics Category:Peking University alumni Category:1925 births Category:Living people

Language in society

The final volume of Halliday’s 10 volumes of Collected Papers 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. Halliday argues that language does not merely to reflect social structure. For instance, he writes:

Linguistic theory and description

The grammar of experience: the cover of An Introduction to Functional Grammar, 2nd ed. (1994), by M.A.K. Halliday, showing the types of process as they have evolved in English grammarSee also p. 108 in this volume.Halliday is notable for his grammatical theory and descriptions, outlined in his book An Introduction to Functional Grammar, first published in 1985. A revised edition was published in 1994, and then a third, in which he collaborated with Christian Matthiessen, in 2004. But Halliday’s conception of grammar – or ‘lexicogrammar’ (a term he coined to argue that lexis and grammar are part of the same phenomenon) – is based on a more general theory of language as a social semiotic resource, or a ‘meaning potential’ (see systemic functional linguistics). Halliday follows Hjelmslev and Firth in distinguishing theoretical from descriptive categories in linguistics.Halliday, M.A.K. 2002. A Personal Perspective. In "On Grammar: Volume 1" in The Collected Works of M.A.K. Halliday. London: Continuum. p 12 He argues that ‘theoretical categories, and their inter-relations, construe an abstract model of language…they are interlocking and mutally defining.Halliday, M.A.K. 2002. A Personal Perspective. In "On Grammar: Volume 1" in The Collected Works of M.A.K. Halliday. London: Continuum. p 12 The theoretical architecture derives from work on the description of natural discourse, and as such ‘no very clear line is drawn between ‘(theoretical) linguistics’ and ‘applied linguistics’.Halliday, M.A.K. 2002. A Personal Perspective. In "On Grammar: Volume 1" in The Collected Works of M.A.K. Halliday. London: Continuum. pp. 7, 14 Thus, the theory ‘is continually evolving as it is brought to bear on solving problems of a research or practical nature’.Halliday, M.A.K. 2002. A Personal Perspective. In "On Grammar: Volume 1" in The Collected Works of M.A.K. Halliday. London: Continuum. p 12 Halliday contrasts theoretical categories with descriptive categories, defined as ‘categories set up in the description of particular languages’.Halliday, M.A.K. 2002. A Personal Perspective. In "On Grammar: Volume 1" in The Collected Works of M.A.K. Halliday. London: Continuum. p. 12 His descriptive work has been focused on English and Chinese.

Halliday rejects explicitly the claims about language associated with the generative tradition. Language, he argues, "cannot be equated with ‘the set of all grammatical sentences’, whether that set is conceived of as finite or infinite".Halliday, M.A.K. 1985. Systemic Background. In "Systemic Perspectives on Discourse, Vol. 1: Selected Theoretical Papers" from the Ninth International Systemic Workshop, James D. Benson and William S. Greaves (eds). Ablex. Reprinted in Full in Volume 3 in The Collected Works of M.A.K. Halliday. London: Continuum. p. 192. He rejects the use of formal logic in linguistic theories as "irrelevant to the understanding of language" and the use of such approaches as "disastrous for linguistics".Halliday, M.A.K. 1995. A Recent View of “Missteps” in Linguistic Theory. In Functions of Language 2.2. Reprinted in Full in Volume 3 in The Collected Works of M.A.K. Halliday. London: Continuum. p. 236. On Chomsky specifically, he writes that "imaginary problems were created by the whole series of dichotomies that Chomsky introduced, or took over unproblematized: not only syntax/semantics but also grammar/lexis, language/thought, competence/performance. Once these dichotomies had been set up, the problem arose of locating and maintaining the boundaries between them." Halliday, M.A.K. 1995. A Recent View of “Missteps” in Linguistic Theory. In Functions of Language 2.2. Reprinted in Full in Volume 3 in The Collected Works of M.A.K. Halliday. London: Continuum. p. 236.