Michael Halliday Quotes

The theme is what is being talked about, the point of departure for the clause as message, and the speaker has within certain limits the option of selecting any element in the clause as thematic.

[A register is constituted by] the linguistic features which are typically associated with a configuration of situational features - with particular values of the field, mode and tenor.

[interpersonal meaning] embodies all use of language to express social and personal relations, including all forms of the speaker's intrusion into the speech situation and the speech act.

[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.

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

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

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

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

Saussure took the sign as the organizing concept for linguistic structure, using it to express the conventional nature of language in the phrase "l'arbitraire du signe". This has the effect of highlighting what is, in fact, the one point of arbitrariness in the system, namely the phonological shape of words, and hence allows the non-arbitrariness of the rest to emerge with greater clarity. An example of something that is distinctly non-arbitrary is the way different kinds of meaning in language are expressed by different kinds of grammatical structure, as appears when linguistic structure is interpreted in functional terms.

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.

… 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.

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.

Language... is a range of possibilities, and an open end set of options in behavior that are available to the individual in his existence as social man. The context of culture is the environment of any particular selection that is made within them... The context of culture defines the potential, the range of possibilities that are open. The actual choice among these possibilities takes place within a given context of situation.

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.