Language and Society

Professor M. A. K. Halliday (b. 1925) was Foundation Professor of Linguistics at the University of Sydney, Australia, until his retirement and has taught as a Visiting Professor around the world. As a self-styled 'generalist' he has published in many branches of linguistics. Professor Jonathan J. Webster is Head of the Department of Chinese, Translation and Linguistics at the City University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong.

• Preface; Acknowledgments; Part 1: Users and Uses; Editor's Introduction; 1. The Users and Uses of Language; Part 2: Sociolinguistic Theory; Editor's Introduction; 2. Language in a Social Perspective; 3. Language and Social Man; 4. Sociological Aspects of Semantic Change; 5. Language as Social Semiotic: Towards a General Sociolinguistic Theory; 6. Some Aspects of Sociolinguistics; Part 3: Language and Social Class; Editor's Introduction; 7. 'Foreword' to Basil Bernstein's Class, Codes and Control Vol. II: Applied Studies towards a Sociology of Language; 8. Language and the Theory of Codes; Part 4: Language and Social Structure; Editor's Introduction; 9. An Interpretation of the Functional Relationship between Language and Social Structure; 10. Anti-languages; Bibliography.

"Everyone will come away from this reading and re-reading of Michael Halliday's writings on language and society with a different insight: for me it is two matters; every person's capacity for creativity in exploiting meaning potential, and the central importance of establishing a unifying system able not only to capture form but to relate it consequentially and functionally to our understandings of social life." Chris Candlin, Senior Research Professor, Macquarie University, Australia '...a major enterprise comparable to a grand retrospective of the painting of some prominent artist of a distinctive school.' Roy Harris, Times Literary Supplement"