M.A.K Halliday
EDCI
690.41
RDG 692/EDCI 690 Learning to Read
Maria Viera-Williams
Biography-Early Years
• Michael A. K. Halliday was born in 1925 in
Leeds, Yorkshire England. He was raised in
England to an academic family. His parents
influenced his language interests. His mother
had studied French, and his father was a
dialectologist, a dialect poet, and an English
teacher.
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Biography: Education and
Experiences with Foreign Languages
• In 1942, Halliday volunteered for the
national services' foreign language training
course. He was selected to study Chinese
because of his ability to differentiate tones.
After 18 months' training, he spent a year
in India working with the Chinese
Intelligence Unit doing counter-intelligence
work.
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Education
• In 1945 he was brought back to London to
teach Chinese. Halliday received a BA
Honors degree in Modern Chinese
Language and Literature (Mandarin)
through the University of London, located
in China.
RDG 692/ EDCI 690, Spring 2013
Maria Viera-Williams
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From Languages to Linguistics
• After teaching languages for 13 years, Halliday
changed his field of specialization to linguistics,
and developed systemic functional linguistics,
including systemic functional grammar,
expanding on the ideas of his British teacher J.
R. Firth and a group of European linguists.
• Halliday’s seminal paper on this model was
published in 1961. It influenced many studies on
studies on the systems and functions of
language in context.
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What is text?
• “When people speak or write, they produce text.
The term `text’ refers to any instance of
language, in any medium, that makes sense to
someone who knows the language. To a
grammarian, text is a rich, many-faceted
phenomenon that `means’ in many different
ways. It can be explored from many different
points of view. …”
-Michael A.K. Halliday
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The Language
of Early Childhood
• In an attempt to understand how humans
develop language, Michael Halliday spent
twenty-one months studying early childhood
language development.
• Although his sample size consisted of one, his
child son, Nigel, Halliday emerged with insights
that continue to generate meaning today, over
fifty years later, across multiple fields and
disciplines.
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Needing to Mean
• Halliday proposed a systemic theory of
language that ties our earliest meaningful
utterances with those we speak as adults.
• Halliday argued that humans develop
language because we are creatures who
need to mean, and language, is our
primary resource for meaning.
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Learning How to Mean
• According to Halliday, language is a resource for
making meaning. An infant who cannot talk is
developing language, and thereby learning how
to mean as he interacts with those around him.
• The infant’s protolanguage, or child tongue, is
created through interactions with native
speakers of the mother tongue (i.e., caregivers,
siblings, etc.). The child learns to mean through
contexts and situations, and begins to communicate with basic content expressions.
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Three Phases
• Halliday considers Phase I of language
development (i.e., the protolanguage
stage) to be evolutionary. It is followed by
the lexico-grammatical Phase II, which
bridges protolanguage and the mother
tongue development of Phase III, the
beginning stages of fluency.
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Three Phases continued
• In the pre-verbal stage, Phase I, the child
begins to meaningfully voice his intentions and
desires. The protolanguage stage performs five
primary functions: instrumental (to obtain good
and services), regulatory (direct/manipulate
someone), interactional (child + other), personal
(here-I-am attention, and imaginative (child can
pretend). The child is not using words yet, but is
expressing intentions.
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Phase II
• Phase II is the transitional stage. The child
speaks some words and uses grammar at
a beginning level.
• Nigel developed the ability to respond to
Wh-questions in phase II.
EDCI 690, UNIT 2, Fall 2012
Maria Viera-Williams
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Phase III
• The child is developing an ability to
transform experience into meaning and
to reflect and act on the world is
characteristic of Phase III language
development.
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Halliday
• According to Halliday, function precedes
vocabulary.
• Meaning is constructed through language that
arises from situations ( Ex: Nigel’s wound)
• Text is not only sounds, letters and words: it is a
choice.
• Halliday’s 1975 study has had a lasting effect on
linguists and educators. He gave insight to preverbal and early child language as being
systemic, stratified, purposeful, and meaningful.
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Selected List of Publications
• Halliday, M.A.K. 1961. Categories of the theory
of grammar. Word 17.
• Halliday M.A.K. 1971. 'Language Acquisition
and Initial Literacy'. Malcolm P. Douglass (ed.)
• Claremont Reading Conference 35th Yearbook.
pp.63-68.
• Halliday M.A.K. 1971. 'A 'Linguistic Approach' to
the Teaching of the Mother Tongue?'. The
• English Quarterly (Canadian Council of
Teachers of English). 4.2. pp.13-24.
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Publications continued
• Halliday M.A.K. 1972. 'National Language and
Language Planning in a Multilingual Society'.
• Halliday M.A.K. 1972. 'Systemic Grammar'. La
Grammatica; La Lessicologia. Rome: Bulzoni
(Atti del I e Del II Convegno di Studi, Societa di
Linguistica Italiana). pp.17-24.
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Publications continued
• Halliday, M.A.K. & Ruqaiya Hasan. 1976.
Cohesion in English, London: Longman.
• Halliday, M.A.K. 1977. 'Some Thoughts On
Language in the Middle School Years'. English
in Australia.42. pp.3-16.
• Halliday, M.A.K. 1978 Language as social
semiotic. The social interpretation of language
and meaning. London: Edward Arnold.
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