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Halliday's Model Of Register Revisited And Explored, Annabelle Lukin, Alison R. Moore, Maria Herke, Rebekah Wegener, Canzhong Wu

Faculty of Arts - Papers (Archive)

Halliday’s description of register as ‘a variety of language, corresponding to a variety of situation’, with situation interpreted ‘by means of a conceptual framework using the terms “field”, “tenor” and “mode”’ (Halliday, 1985/89: 29, 38) is revisited to reflect on the theoretical work the term ‘register’ does within the SFL paradigm. In doing so, we recognize that the concepts of a linguistic theory are ‘ineffable’ (Halliday, 2002 [1988]); i.e. that ‘providing definitions of a theoretical term ... requires that it be posi- tioned vis-à-vis other concepts in the theory’ (Hasan, 2004: 16). It follows that chang- ing the position of …