Michael Halliday - Meaning Quotes

7 Sourced Quotes

View all Michael Halliday Quotes
[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.

Michael Halliday
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

Michael Halliday
... 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

Michael Halliday
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

Michael Halliday
[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.

Michael Halliday
The text is a product in the sense that it is an output, something that can be recorded and studied, having a certain construction that can be represented in systematic terms. It is a process in the sense of a continuous process of semantic choice, a movement through the network of meaning potential, with each set of choices constituting the environment for a further set.

Michael Halliday
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

Michael Halliday