RDG 692/EDCI 690 Learning to Read 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.

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.

RDG 692/ EDCI 690, Spring 2013 Maria Viera-Williams 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

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.

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

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.

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.

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 commun-icate with basic content expressions.

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.

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.

EDCI 690, UNIT 2, Fall 2012 Maria Viera-Williams 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

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.

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 pre-verbal and early child language as being systemic, stratified, purposeful, and meaningful.

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.

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.

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.