Michael Alexander Kirkwood (M. A. K.) Halliday

Jonathan James Webster
City University of Hong Kong
Table of contents

Alexander Kirkwood Halliday, whose pioneering approach to the study of language is known as Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL), was born on Easter Monday, 13 April 1925 in Leeds, Yorkshire, England. He passed away on 15 April 2018 in Sydney, Australia, at the age of 93. Halliday recognized complementarity where some see only dichotomy, such as between system and text, grammar and lexis, speech and writing, the congruent and the metaphorical (Halliday 2008). Distinctive to Halliday’s systemic-functional model is the functional organization of language, register variation according to use (Matthiessen 2015), and prioritizing the paradigmatic over the syntagmatic. Halliday envisioned linguistics as a human science encompassing the various dimensions of language in social life, integrating the socio and the pragma (see for example Lecompte-Van Poucke’s 2021 ‘pragma-functional’ approach ‘combining systemic functional linguistics with argumentation theory, critical discourse studies and postcolonial insights’). Also discussed are the various influences that contributed to Halliday’s unique emphasis on developing an appliable linguistics (see Mahboob and Knight 2010).

Full-text access is restricted to subscribers. Log in to obtain additional credentials. For subscription information see Subscription & Price.

References

Bernstein, Basil
1971 Class, Codes and Control: Theoretical Studies towards a Sociology of Language. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.Google Scholar
(Ed) 1973 Class, Codes and Control 2 . London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.Google Scholar
1990 The Structuring of Pedagogic Discourse. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Bühler, Karl
1990 Theory of Language: The Representational Function of Language (trans D. F. Goodwin). Amsterdam: Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Burns, Anne
2006 “Applied Linguistics: thematic pursuits or disciplinary moorings? – a conversation between Michael Halliday and Anne Burns.” Journal of Applied Linguistics 3 (1): 113–28.Google Scholar
Butler, Christopher S.
1985a Systemic linguistics: Theory and applications. London: Batsford.Google Scholar
1985b “The applicability or systemic theories”. Australian Journal of Applied Linguislics 8 (1): 1–30. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
1988 “Pragmatics and Systemic Linguistics”. Journal of Pragmatics 12, pp. 83–102. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Butt, David
Forthcoming. “Disciplinary English: the ‘knight’s move’ in Halliday’s theories of verbal science and verbal art.”
Butt, David and Jonathan Webster
2019 “From the workbench: the ‘knight’s move’ in Halliday’s long conversation between verbal art and verbal science” in The Bloomsbury companion to M. A. K. Halliday, ed. by Jonathan Webster, 467–488. London: Bloomsbury.Google Scholar
Davidse, Kristin & Anne-Marie Simon-Vandenbergen
2008 “Introduction: The realization of interpersonal meaning.” Word, 59:1–2, 3–23. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Halliday, M. A. K.
1971/2007 “Language in a Social Perspective.” in J. Webster (Ed.) Language and Society, Volume 10 Collected Works of M.A.K. Halliday, ed. by Jonathan Webster, 43–64. London: Bloomsbury. First published in 1971, Educational Review, 23 (3), 165–188.Google Scholar
1974/2007 “Language and Social Man.” in Language and Society, Volume 10 Collected Works of M.A.K. Halliday, ed. by Jonathan Webster, 65–130. London: Bloomsbury. First published in 1974, in Schools Council Programme in Linguistics and English Teaching: Papers, Series II, Vol. 3, London: Longman. Pearson Education Limited.Google Scholar
1975/2003a “The Social Context of Language Development.” in The Language of Early Childhood, Volume 4, Collected Works of M.A.K. Halliday, ed. by Jonathan Webster, 281–307. London: Bloomsbury. First published in 1975, in Learning How to Mean: Explorations in the Development of Language. London: Edward Arnold, 120–45.Google Scholar
1975/2003b “Learning how to mean.” in The Language of Early Childhood, Volume 4, Collected Works of M.A.K. Halliday, ed. by Jonathan Webster, 28–59. London: Bloomsbury. First published in 1995, in Foundations of Language Development. A Multidisciplinary Perspective, ed. by Eric Lenneberg and Elizabeth Lenneberg. London: Academic Press, 239–65.Google Scholar
1975/2007 “Language as Social Semiotics: Towards a General Sociolinguistic Theory.” in Language and Society, Volume 10 Collected Works of M.A.K. Halliday, ed. by Jonathan Webster, 169–202. London: Bloomsbury. First published in 1975, in The First LACUS Forum, ed. by Adam Makkai and Valerie Becker Makkai 17–46. Hornbeam Press: California.Google Scholar
1977/2002 “Text as semantic choice in social contexts.” in Linguistic Studies of Text and Discourse, Volume 2 Collected Works of M.A.K. Halliday, ed. by Jonathan Webster, 23–84. London: Bloomsbury First published in 1977, in Grammars and Descriptions, ed. by Teun A. van Dijk and Janos S. Petofi, Walter de Gruyter, 176–225. Mouton de Gruyter.Google Scholar
1987/2002 “Poetry as Scientific Discourse: The Nuclear Sections of Tennyson’s “In Memoriam.”” In Linguistic Studies of Text and Discourse, volume 2 Collected Works of M.A.K. Halliday, 149–67. First published in 1988, “The nuclear sections of Tennyson’s “In Memoriam””, in Functions of Style, ed. by David Birch and Michael O’Toole, 31–44. University of California: Pinter.Google Scholar
1991/2007 “The Notion of “Context” in Language Education.” in Language and Education, Volume 9 Collected Works, ed. By Jonathan Webster, 269–290. London: Bloomsbury. First published in 1991, in Language Education: Interaction and Development, Proceedings of the International Conference, Vietnam April 1991, ed. by Thao Lê and Mike McCausland, published by University of Tasmania (Launceston).Google Scholar
1991a “Towards probabilistic interpretations”, in Functional and Systemic Linguistics: Approaches and Uses, ed. by Eija Ventola, 39–62. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
1991b “Corpus studies and probabilistic grammar.”, in English Corpus Linguistics: Studies in Honour of Jan Svartvik, ed. by Karin Aijmer and Bengt Altenberg London: Longman.Google Scholar
1992/2002 “How do you mean?” in On Grammar, Volume 1 Collected Works of M.A.K. Halliday, ed. by Jonathan Webster, 352–368. London: Bloomsbury. First published in 1992, in Advances in Systemic Linguistics: Recent Theory and Practice, ed by Martin Davies and Louise Ravelli, 20–35. London: Pinter.Google Scholar
1995/2003 “On language in relation to the evolution of human consciousness” in On Language and Linguistics, Volume 3 Collected Works of M.A.K. Halliday, ed. by Jonathan Webster, 390–432. London: Bloomsbury. First published in 1995, in Of Thoughts and Words (Proceedings of Nobel Symposium 92: The Relation between Language and Mind), ed. by Sture Allen, published by Imperial College Press, Reprinted by permission of World Scientific Publishing Co.Google Scholar
1995/2005 “Fuzzy Grammatics: A Systemic Functional Approach to Fuzziness in Natural Language” in Computational and Quantitative Studies, Volume 6. Collected Works of M.A.K. Halliday, ed. by Jonathan Webster, 213–238. London: Bloomsbury. First published in 1995, Reprinted, with permission, from Proceedings of 1995 IEEE International Conference on Fuzzy Systems. The International Joint Conference of the Fourth IEEE International Conference on Fuzzy Systems and The Second International Fuzzy Engineering Symposium . Piscataway NJ.
1996/2002 “On grammar and grammatics.” in On Grammar, Volume 1 Collected Works of M.A.K. Halliday, ed. by Jonathan Webster, 384–418. London: Bloomsbury. First published in 1996, in Functional Descriptions: Theory inPractice, edited by Ruqaiya Hasan, Carmel Cloran and David G. Butt, 1–38. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
1997/2003 “Linguistics as Metaphor.” in On Language and Linguistics, Volume 3, Collected Works of M.A.K. Halliday, ed. by Jonathan Webster, 1–49. Bloomsbury. First published in 1997, in Reconnecting Language: Morphology and Syntax in Functional Perspectives, ed. by A.-M. Simon-Vandenbergen, K. Davidse and, D. Noel, 3–28. John Benjamins Publishing Company.. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2003 “Introduction: On the “Architecture” of Human Language” in On Language and Linguistics, Volume 3 Collected Works of M.A.K. Halliday, ed. By Jonathan Webster, 1–49. London: Bloomsbury.Google Scholar
2005 Studies in English Language. Volume 7. Collected Works of M.A.K. Halliday. London: Bloomsbury.Google Scholar
2005/2013 “On matter and meaning: the two realms of human experience” in J. Webster (Ed.) Halliday in the 21st Century, Volume 11 Collected Works, ed. by Jonathan Webster, 191–214. London: Bloomsbury. First published in 2005, in Linguistics and the Human Sciences, ed. by Jonathan J. Webster, Equinox, 59–82.Google Scholar
2006 Studies in Chinese Language. Volume 8. Collected Works of M.A.K. Halliday. London: Bloomsbury.Google Scholar
2008 Complementarities in Language. The Halliday Centre series in Appliable Linguistics. Beijing: Commercial Press.Google Scholar
2013 Halliday in the 21st Century. Volume 11. Collected Works of M.A.K. Halliday. London: Bloomsbury.Google Scholar
2015 “The Influence of Marxism” in Bloomsbury Companion to M.A.K. Halliday, ed. By Jonathan Webster, 94–100. London: Bloomsbury.Google Scholar
Halliday, M. A. K., and Jonathan J. Webster
2014 Text Linguistics: The How and Why of Meaning. Sheffield: Equinox Books.Google Scholar
Halliday, M. A. K., and Ruqiaya Hassan
1976 Cohesion in English. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Hardaker, D.
1982 Language in a Regulative Context. Honours Thesis, Department of Linguistics, University of Sydney.
Hasan, Ruqaiya
1999 “Speaking with reference to context.” in Text and Context in Functional Linguistics, ed. By Mohsen Ghadessy, 219–328. Amsterdam: Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2009 “A view of pragmatics in a social semiotic perspective.” Linguistics and the Human Sciences, 5: (3), 251–279. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Kress, Gunther, Ruqaiya Hasan and James R. Martin.
1986 “Interview – M. A. K. Halliday.” Social Semiotics 2 (1): 176–195 and 2 (2): 58–69.Google Scholar
Lecompte-Van Poucke, Margo
2021 The value of a pragmafunctional approach to intercultural conflict discourses. Language, Context and Text, 3(1): 130–173.Google Scholar
Mahboob, Ahmar, Naomi K. Knight
(Eds) 2010 Appliable Linguistics. London: Bloomsbury Publishing.Google Scholar
Malinowski, Bronislaw
1923 “The Problem of Meaning in Primitive Languages.” Supplement 1 to C. K. Ogden and I. A. Richards The Meaning of Meaning, London: Kegan Paul (International Library of Psychology, Philosophy and Scientific Method).Google Scholar
Mann, William C., Sandra A. Thompson
1988 “Rhetorical structure theory: Toward a functional theory of text organization.” Text- interdisciplinary Journal for the Story of Discourse 8(3), 243–281. Berlin/New York: Walter de Gruyter. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Martin, James R.
2000 “Beyond exchange: APPRAISAL systems in English.” in Evaluation in Text, authorial stance and the construction of discourse, ed. by Susan Hunston and Geoff Thompson, 142–175. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
2013 Interviews with M. A. K. Halliday: Language Turned Back on Himself. London: Bloomsbury Publishing.Google Scholar
Martin, James R. and Paul Thibault
2011 “Interview with M.A.K. Halliday.” In Interviews with M. A. K. Halliday: Language Turned Back on Himself, ed. by James R. Martin. London: Bloomsbury Publishing.Google Scholar
Martin, James R., and Peter R. R. White
2005 The Language of Evaluation: Appraisal in English. Palgrave Macmillan. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Matthiessen, Christian M. I. M.
2015 “Register in the Round: registerial cartography”, Functional Linguistics. 2: 9. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Meares, Russell
2016 The Poet’s Voice in the Making of Mind. London: Routledge. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Mwinlaaru, Isaac N., and Winfred Wenhui Xuan
2016 “A survey of studies in systemic functional language description and typology”. Functional Linguistics. 3:8. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
O’Donnell, Mick
2019 Michael Alexander Kirkwood Halliday A Personal Biography. Information on Systemic Functional Linguistics http://​www​.isfla​.org​/Systemics​/History​/HallidayLifePart1​-2​-vOct08​.pdf
Parret, Herman
1974 “Discussing Language”, Janua linguarum 93, 94–96 The Hague: Mouton. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Reid, Thomas B. W.
1956 “Linguistics, structuralism, philology”. Archivum Linguisticum 8, 28–37.Google Scholar
Searle, John R.
1969 Speech Acts: An Essay on the Philosophy of Language. London: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Thibault, Paul J.
1985 “An Interview with Michael Halliday.” In Language Topics: Essays in Honour of Michael Halliday. Vols. 1 and 2, ed. by Ross Steele and Terry Threadgold (eds), 601–27. >Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company.Google Scholar
Thompson, Geoff and Heloisa Collins
1998 “An interview with M. A. K. Halliday, Cardiff, July 1998.” D.E.L.T.A 17 (1): 131–53.Google Scholar
Webster, Carol L.
2021 The Functions of a Second Order of Symbolic Articulation: Linguistic Stylistics and Dialogue in “The Sunset Limited” of Cormac McCarthy. PhD Dissertation, Macquarie University.
Webster, Jonathan J.
2004 “Preface” The Language of Science, Volume 5 Collected Works. London: Bloomsbury, vii–ix.Google Scholar
2019 “Michael Alexander Kirkwood (M.A.K.) Halliday – A brief biography” in Bloomsbury Companion to M.A.K. Halliday, 2nd edition, ed. by Jonathan Webster. London: Bloomsbury.Google Scholar
Webster, Jonathan J. Joe Chan, Victor Yan, and Kim Wong
2013 “Visualizing the Architecture and Texture of a Text: A case study of selected speeches of US President Barack Obama” in Eastward Flows the Great River Festschrift in Honor of Professor William S-Y. Wang on his 80th Birthday, ed. by Gang Peng and Feng Shi, 309–332. City University of Hong Kong Press.Google Scholar
Wylie, Peter K.
2019 A Pragmatic Reconstruction of M.A.K. Halliday’s Systemic Functional Grammar. Ph.D. Dissertation. Macquarie University