Fawcett's Disappointment With Halliday's Reply to Matthews (1966)

Fawcett (2010: 310):

The only 'debate' is in fact Matthews' short article in the Journal of Linguistics (1966) and Halliday's fairly brief 'reply' in the same issue. … Judging by later references to this 'debate' in the literature of SFL (e.g., in Berry 1975 and Butler 1985), some systemic linguists found Halliday's 'reply' more persuasive than others. I myself was somewhat disappointed with it because I wanted to know how he would handle the various problems raised by Matthews, on the grounds that theoretical concepts depend ultimately on their value as a framework for making detailed descriptions. But Halliday did not indicate how he would resolve these problems.

Blogger Comments:

This is misleading, because in the course of identifying misunderstandings and fallacious argumentation on the part of Matthews, Halliday (1966) did indeed address the various problems raised that Fawcett wanted resolved. See the following two posts.