Exploring the “language” part of language education
This paper is based on a series of lectures Halliday presented in the Faculty of Education, University of Hong Kong in
2005. As Amy Tsui indicates in her companion paper in this issue, it was to have been the first chapter in a book that would also include
chapters by other scholars discussing the educational use of some of Halliday’s theoretical and practical proposals, but for various reasons
the book did not eventuate. (See also the first sentence of the paper.) One distinctive feature of the paper is its reach over a very large
range of concepts in Halliday’s theory. Another is its accessibility for educators looking to find a general introduction to aspects of
systemic functional linguistic theory relevant to education. The final section illustrates the analytical use of the theory in various
educational contexts through examples of discourse analyses.1
Keywords: language education, architecture of language, working model of language, appliable linguistics, system networks, realisation, instantiation, grammatical metaphor, rank scale, language complexity, discourse
Article outline
- 1.Toward an “appliable” linguistics
- 2.The “architecture” of language
- 3.Elaborating the theory
- 3.1Paradigmatic composition: The system network
- 3.2Stratification: The relation of realisation in language
- 3.3Metafunction: Modes of meaning in language
- 3.4Instantiation: The relation of system to instance
- 3.5Syntagmatic composition: The rank scale
- 4.Construing complexity in language
- 5.The dimension of history in language
- 6.From grammar to discourse
- 6.1The interpersonal metafunction: Appraisal
- 6.2The interpersonal metafunction: Gaining insights into the theme of a literary text
- 6.3The textual metafunction: Theme and Rheme
- 6.4The experiential metafunction: Analysing verbal art
- 7.Conclusion
- Notes
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References
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Addendum