Michael Halliday Quotes

[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.

[Register] is set of meanings, the configuration of semantic patterns, that are typically drawn upon under the specified conditions, along with the words and structures that are used in the realization of these meanings.

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

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

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.

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

A physical system is just that: a physical system. What is systematized is matter itself, and the processes in which the system is realized are also material. But a biological system is more complex: it is both biological and physical — it is matter with the added component of life; and a social system is more complex still: it is physical, and biological, with the added component of social order, or value. … A semiotic system is still one step further in complexity: it is physical, and biological, and social —and also semiotic: what is being systematized is meaning. In evolutionary terms, it is a system of the fourth order of complexity

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

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