Halliday’s Functional Grammar: Philosophical Foundation and Epistemology

https://doi.org/10.22146/jh.24295

Nguyen Thi Tu Trinh(1*), Phan Van Hoa(2), Tran Huu Phuc(3)

(1) University of Da Nang
(2) 
(3) 
(*) Corresponding Author

Abstract


It is difficult to track the philosophy foundation and epistemology of systemic functional grammar (SFG) formulated by Halliday in the 1980s as this kind of grammar views language as a systemic resource for meaning. Besides, it has had global impacts on linguistics and flourished in contemporary linguistic theory. Anyone who is familiar with Halliday’s work realizes that his SFG is an approach designed to analyze English texts. Halliday (1994: xv) explicitly states that “to construct a grammar for purposes of text analysis: one that would make it possible to say sensible and useful things about any text, spoken or written, in modern English.” The aim of this study is not about the applicability of SFG to text analysis as many researchers and scholars do. Our efforts are made to clarify the philosophical foundation of Halliday’s SFG. The paper presents on triangle: (i) language, mind and world; (ii) and empiricism in Halliday’s SFG.


Full Text:

PDF


References

Alexander, J. & Weinberg, J. (2007). “Analytic Epistemology and Experimental Philosophy,”
Philosophy Compass, 2(1): 56–80.

Bloor, T. & Bloor, M. (1995). The Functional Analysis of English: A Hallidayan Approach. Edward Arnold.

Bronte, E. (1858). Wuthering Heights. Harper &Brothers, Publisher. New York.

Chapman, S. & Routledge, C. (2009). Key Ideas in Linguistics and the Philosophy of Language.
Edinburgh University Press.

Chomsky, N. (1988). Language and Problems of Knowledge, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Lawrance, D.H. (1913). Sons and Lovers. Wordsworth Classics.

Eggins, S. (1994), An introduction into Systemic Functional Linguistics. London and New York:Continuum.

Firth, J. R. (1948). “Sounds and prosodies.” Transactions of the Philological Society. 127-152.

Gwilliams, L. & Fontaine, L. (2015). “Indeterminacy in process type classification”. Functional Linguistics 2015; 2:8. London: Springer.

Halliday, M.A.K. (1956). Grammatical categories in Modern Chinese. Transactions of the Philosophical Society. Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society.

Halliday, M.A.K. (1959). The language of the Chinese “Secret History of the Mongols”. Oxford:Blackwell.

Halliday, M.A.K. (1976). Learning How to Mean: Explorations in the Development of Language.
London: Edward Arnold.

Halliday, M.A.K. (1977). “Ideas about Language”Occasional Papers I. Applied Linguistics Association of Australia. Pp. 32-55.

Halliday, M.A.K. (1978). Language as social semiotic. The social interpretation of language and meaning. London: Edward Arnold.

Halliday, M.A.K. (1985). Introduction to functional grammar. London: Arnold.

Halliday, M.A.K. & Matthiessen, C.M.I.M. (2000). Construing experience through meaning: a language-based approach to cognition, Open linguistics series, Continuum International.

Halliday, M.A.K. & Matthiessen, C.M.I.M. (2004). An introduction to Functional Grammar. 3rd ed.
London, Arnold.

Hjelmslev, L. (1969). Prolegomena to a theory of language. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press.

Martin, J. R., Matthiessen, C. and Painter, C. (1997). Working with Functional Grammar. London:
Edward Arnold.

O’Donnell, M., Zappavigna, M. & C Whitelaw. (2009). “A survey of process type classification over difficult cases. In From Language to Multimodality: New Developments in the Study of Ideational Meaning”, ed. C Jones and E Ventola, 47–64. London: Continuum.

Kenny, A. (1986). Rationalism, Empiricism and Idealism.Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Mwinlaaru, I. N. & Xuan, W. W. (2016). “A survey of studies in systemic functional language description and typology”. Functional Linguistics. Springer Open.

Nguyen Thien Giap. (2014). “N. Chomsky’s Generative Linguistics: Philosophical Foundation and Epistemology”. Journal of Science, Vietnam National University, Hanoi, Vol. 30, No. 4, p.1-9.

Sailing, J.D. (1951). The Catcher in the Rye. An imprint of Infobase Publishing. New York.

Willis, J. (2009). Qualitative Research Methods in Education and Educational Technology. Information Age Publishing Inc. USA.



DOI: https://doi.org/10.22146/jh.24295

Article Metrics

Abstract views : 9333 | views : 5699

Refbacks

  • There are currently no refbacks.


Bookmark and Share


Copyright (c) 2017 Humaniora

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.