Terry Threadgold

Ross Steele

This volume in honour of Michael Halliday begins with a section on the background to the development of MAK’s ideas. The second section groups papers on language development in early childhood, which has always been one of Halliday’s main interests. The focus of the third section is on aspects of synchronic and diachronic change in language. Halliday has always emphasised the dynamic interaction between these two perspectives in relation to language use in social contexts. The final section caters to Halliday’s interest in ethnographic, anthropological and educational issues and explore language use in a diversity of world contexts.

Essays in honour of Michael Halliday

Language Topics

This second volume in honour of Michael Halliday contains three sections: The Design of Language, Text and Discourse and Exploring Language as Social Semiotic, and concludes with a recent interview conducted by Paul Thibault in which Halliday provides further insights in his theory of language. The essential design features of language are semantic, lexico-grammatical and phonological. Text for Halliday is a semantic unit expressed by the lexico-grammatical and phonological patterns in language. The papers in the first section study aspects of these three strata of language and the relation between them. The second section deals with units higher than the clause complex and the papers there attempt to integrate the analysis of the lexico-grammatical and phonological systems into higher level discourse units. The papers in the third section develop the notion of language as social semiotic which is central to Haliday’s model of language.

This volume in honour of Michael Halliday begins with a section on the background to the development of MAK s ideas. The second section groups papers on language development in early childhood, which has always been one of Halliday s main interests. The focus of the third section is on aspects of synchronic and diachronic change in language. Halliday has always emphasised the dynamic interaction between these two perspectives in relation to language use in social contexts. The final section caters to Halliday s interest in ethnographic, anthropological and educational issues and explore language use in a diversity of world contexts.

Ross Steele

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