When I do the Harold Rosen Lecture at NATE conference this year, I will try to challenge the idea of language as a closed rule-based system and pose the alternative that language is human behaviour with procedures agreed (though sometimes contested) by its various and diverse practitioners. Its not sufficient to acknowledge that there is diversity and change, its not sufficient to allot some words and phrases as non-categorizable. A different model of language-in-use is needed that never leaves the producer or the recipient out of the picture. Some say Halliday cracked this, but every time I read Halliday, it always seems to be there at the outset but slips out of sight as the social aspect of the participants becomes less important in the descriptions....
Posted on: Sat, 08 Feb 2014 21:14:10 +0000
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