Exploring the “language” part of language education

Abstract

Abstract This paper is based on a series of lectures Halliday presented in the Faculty of Education, University of Hong Kong in 2005. As Amy Tsui indicates in her companion paper in this issue, it was to have been the first chapter in a book that would also include chapters by other scholars discussing the educational use of some of Halliday’s theoretical and practical proposals, but for various reasons the book did not eventuate. (See also the first sentence of the paper.) One distinctive feature of the paper is its reach over a very large range of concepts in Halliday’s theory. Another is its accessibility for educators looking to find a general introduction to aspects of systemic functional linguistic theory relevant to education. The final section illustrates the analytical use of the theory in various educational contexts through examples of discourse analyses.1