Continuing Discourse on Language - A Functional Perspective, Volumes 1 and 2 - Ruqaiya Hasan†
3. Introduction: a working model of language
Continuing Discourse on Language - A Functional Perspective, Volumes 1 and 2 - Ruqaiya Hasan†
Ruqaiya Hasan† [+]
Macquarie University
Ruqaiya Hasan, who died in 2015, was a professor of linguistics who taught and held visiting positions at various universities in England. Her last appointment was at Macquarie University, Australia, from where she retired as Emeritus Professor in 1994. Throughout her career she researched and published widely in the areas of verbal art, culture, context and text, text and texture, lexicogrammar and semantic variation.
Read her obituary here
Description
In the present chapter, we attempt to position Halliday’s work in relation to two contexts of intellectual climate in the field of linguistics: first the context of mid-twentieth century when his interest in linguistics took its initial shape and direction; secondly, the context of today’s linguistics, when it may be justifiably claimed that Halliday’s Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) – the model, he and his colleagues have been developing to explain how and why language works – is one of the most well-tried, comprehensive and competent, judged by any such criteria as those of observational, descriptive and/or explanatory adequacy.