The "Introduction" of IFG provides twenty-two pages of wide-ranging discussion, taking in "natural grammar", "grammar and semantics", "sentence and word", "system and text", "the spoken language", "the unconscious language", "theoretical approach", "applications", "the 'code", and "possible grammars". However, while this "Introduction" includes many interesting passages (e.g., that concerning "grammar and semantics", which I have referred to in Chapters 3 and 4), and while it certainly gives the reader a general sense of Halliday's approach to language, it does not set out for the reader the set of theoretical categories that underlie the main body of the book.
Blogger Comments:
This is misleading because it misrepresents IFG. On the one hand, as Halliday (1994: xxvii, xxvi) explicitly states in the Introduction:
This is not an account of systemic theory… No attempt is made to 'teach' the categories.On the other hand, the following theoretical categories are introduced in the introduction:
- metafunction (xiii)
- element (xiv)
- units (xiv, xxi)
- strata (xiv)
- system network (xiv, xxvi)
- stratal realisation (xvii, xx)
- structure (xviii)
- grammatical metaphor (xviii)
- rank (xix)
- paradigmatic vs syntagmatic (xix)
- cohesion (xx)
- system probabilities (xxii)
- instantiation (xxii)
- entry condition (xxvi)
- realisation statement (xxvi)
- axial realisation (xxvii)
- delicacy (xxvii)
- context of situation and context of culture (xxx-i)
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