The Language of Science (Collected Works of M.A.K. Halliday)

For nearly half a century, Professor M.A.K Halliday has been enriching the discipline of linguistics with his keen insight into this social semiotic phenomenon we call language. His scholarship has advanced our understanding of language as an activity which is both rational and relational, systemic and semantic, dynamic and diverse. Building on the legacy of his mentor, Professor J.R. Firth, Halliday approaches language from the vantage point of meaning and purpose, and provides a sound theoretical framework for dealing with questions about how and why we come to use language as we do for being and becoming who we are.

Halliday's work has long attracted a wide audience, which includes linguists, educators, computer scientists and policy makers. What many find appealing in the man and his scholarship is his rejection, on the one hand, of the elitism typical of certain other schools of linguistics, while on the other hand embracing the study of that which powers language and also conditions our ways of thinking and behaving.