22 Facts About Michael Halliday

Michael Halliday described language as a semiotic system, "not in the sense of a system of signs, but a systemic resource for meaning".

For Michael Halliday, language was a "meaning potential"; by extension, he defined linguistics as the study of "how people exchange meanings by 'languaging'".

Michael Halliday described himself as a generalist, meaning that he tried "to look at language from every possible vantage point", and has described his work as "wander[ing] the highways and byways of language".

In 1942, Michael Halliday volunteered for the National Services' foreign language training course.

Michael Halliday was selected to study Chinese on the strength of his success in being able to differentiate tones.

Michael Halliday then lived for three years in China, where he studied under Luo Changpei at Peking University and under Wang Li at Lingnan University, before returning to take a PhD in Chinese linguistics at Cambridge under the supervision of Gustav Hallam and then JR Firth.

Michael Halliday worked in multiple areas of linguistics, both theoretical and applied and was especially concerned with applying the understanding of the basic principles of language to the theory and practices of education.

Michael Halliday has honorary doctorates from the University of Birmingham, York University, the University of Athens, Macquarie University, Lingnan University and Beijing Normal University.

Michael Halliday died in Sydney of natural causes on 15 April 2018 at the age of 93.

Michael Halliday follows Hjelmslev and Firth in distinguishing theoretical from descriptive categories in linguistics.

Michael Halliday argues against some claims about language associated with the generative tradition.

Michael Halliday rejects the use of formal logic in linguistic theories as "irrelevant to the understanding of language" and the use of such approaches as "disastrous for linguistics".

Michael Halliday defined structure as "likeness between events in successivity" and as "an arrangement of elements ordered in places".

Michael Halliday rejects a view of the structure as "strings of classes, such as nominal group + verbalgroup + nominal group", describing structure instead as "configurations of functions, where the solidarity is organic".

Michael Halliday's "systemic grammar" is a semiotic account of grammar, because of this orientation to choice.

Michael Halliday argues that language does not exist merely to reflect social structure.

In enumerating his claims about the trajectory of children's language development, Michael Halliday eschews the metaphor of "acquisition", in which language is considered a static product that the child takes on when sufficient exposure to natural language enables "parameter setting".

Michael Halliday identifies seven functions that language has for children in their early years.

For Michael Halliday, children are motivated to develop language because it serves certain purposes or functions for them.

Michael Halliday's work is sometimes seen as representing a competing viewpoint to the formalist approach of Noam Chomsky.

Michael Halliday's stated concern is with "naturally occurring language in actual contexts of use" in a large typological range of languages.

Michael Halliday proposed an ordered typology of systems to account for different types of complex systems operating in different phenomenal realms.