Michael Halliday Quotes

We should not, perhaps, take it for granted that a description in terms of a formalised model, which has certain properties lacking in those derived from models of another kind, will necessarily be the best description for all of the very diverse purposes for which the descriptions of languages are needed. In assessing the value of a description, it is reasonable to ask whether it has proved useful for the purposes for which it was intended.

In the relative orientation of different social groups towards the various functions of language in given contexts and towards the different areas of meaning that may be explored within a given function

Any text in spoken English is organized into what may be called 'information units'. (...) this is not determined (...) by constituent structure. Rather could it be said that the distribution of information specifies a distinct structure on a different plan. (...) Information structure is realized phonologically by 'tonality', the distribution of the text into tone groups.

p. xiv cited in: Piet Van de Craen (2007) Van Brussel gesproken. p. 118.

The grammatical system has … a functional input and a structural output; it provides the mechanism for different functions to be combined in one utterance

… language has evolved in the service of particular human needs … what is really significant is that this functional principle is carried over and built into the grammar, so that the internal organization of the grammar system is also functional in character.

What makes learning possible is that the coding imposed by the mother tongue corresponds to a possible mode of perception and interpretation of the environment. A green car can be analysed experientially as carness qualified by greenness, if that is the way the system works.

Traditionally, grammar has always been a grammar of written language: and it has always been a product grammar" ['Product' is here used as one term of the Hjelmslevian pair process/product.] A process/product distinction is a relevant one for linguists because it corresponds to that between our experience of speech and our experience of writing: writing exists whereas speech happens.

[The construal of context as a semiotic construct accompanies the construal of language as a metafunctionally organized system because of the realizational relationship between the two. And it is this relationship which helps to explain how language is learned:]
It is this that enables, and disposes, the child to learn the lexicogrammar: since the system is organized along functional lines, it relates closely to what the child can see language doing as he observes it going on around him.

Foregrounding, as I understand it, is prominence that is motivated

[... language, as an example of a semiotic system, contains all four levels of organization as follows:] First, it is transmitted physically, by sound waves traveling through the air; secondly, it is produced and received biologically, by the human brain and its associated organs of speech and hearing; thirdly it is exchanged socially, in contexts set up and defined by the social structure; and fourthly it is organized semiotically as a system of meanings

A child learning his [her] mother tongue is learning how to name; he [she] is building up a meaning potential in respect of a limited number of social functions. These functions [instrumental, regulatory, interactional, personal, heuristic, and imaginative] constitute the semiotic environment of a very small child, and may be thought of as universals of human culture

The interpersonal function [of language] is the function “to establish, maintain, and specify relations between members of societies”

It is part of the task of linguistics to describe texts, and all texts, including those prose or verse, which fall within any definition of literature and are accessible to analysis by the existing methods of linguistics.

The human sciences have to assume at least an equal responsibility in establishing the foundations of knowledge.