Construing Experience Through Meaning

Construing Experience Through Meaning by Mak Halliday

This is a study edition of this important work by M A K Halliday. The subject of this book is how human beings construe their experience of the world. The construction of experience is usually thought of as knowledge, represented in the form of conceptual taxonomies, schemata, scripts and the like. The authors offer an interpretation that is complementary to this, treating experience not as knowing but as meaning; and hence as something that is construed in language. In other words, the concern is with the construal of human experience as a semantic system; and since language plays the central role not only in storing and exchanging experience but also in construing it, language is taken as the interpretative base. The focus of the book is both theoretical and descriptive. The authors consider it important that theory and description should develop in parallel, with constant interchange between the two. The major descriptive component is an account of the most general features of the ideational semantics of English, which is then exemplified in two familiar text types (recipes and weather forecasts). There is also a brief reference to the semantics of Chinese. Theoretical issues are raised throughout as they become relevant to the discussion, with the theoretical base being drawn from systemic functional linguistics. Both the theoretical and descriptive proposals offered in the book are compared and contrasted with approaches deriving from Al, cognitive science and cognitive linguistics.

M. A. K Halliday is Emeritus Professor of Linguistics at the University of Sydney. Christian M. I. M. Matthiessen is Professor of Linguistics at Macquarie University, Sydney.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9780826488923
ISBN 10	0826488927
Title	Construing Experience Through Meaning
Author	Mak Halliday
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Paperback
Publisher	Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
Year published	2006-05-16
Number of pages	672
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.
Note	Unavailable