【学术讲座】The Meaning-Making Power of Language
主讲人：Professor Jonathan Webster
时 间：2016年11月2日15：00—17：00
地 点：思学楼A417
主讲人简介：
Jonathan Webster教授是香港城市大学汉语、翻译及语言学系教授，“韩礼德语言研究人工智能应用中心”主任。Webster教授是一位在国际语言学界具有广泛影响的学者，曾经出版《语篇语言学》、Understanding Verbal Art: A Functional Linguistic Approach等专著多部，发表论文百余篇，主编《韩礼德文集》等20多部文集。他主编多本语言学和人文科学、ESCI索引期刊，长期致力于探索语言学之间的关系和其他领域的学术问题。近年来，Webster教授结合修辞结构理论（RST）和系统功能语言学理论研究成果，将语言学理论与人工智能方法相结合，探索视觉与语义之间的互动关联，在国际多模态话语研究和语言学领域产生了较大影响。
Title:
The Meaning-Making Power of Language
Abstract:
Halliday describes language as ‘a basic human resource with potentially immense power, which is hidden, partly because people are genuinely not aware of how much they are, in fact, depending on it.’ We depend on language to construe the world around us and describe our feelings within, and exchange this meaning with others.
Meaning, in SFL theory, is not limited to referential meaning, i.e. word meanings. We not only use language to construe experience but also to enact social relationships, and create the discourse. Corresponding to these three kinds of meaning are what Halliday refers to as the Metafunctions of Language: Ideational, Interpersonal and Textual. Operating in parallel, together these metafunctions comprise the total meaning potential of a language. Each defines a set of options or meaningful choices.
What enables this meaning-making potential in language is the lexico-grammar. The complex realization of options from these three metafunctions becomes evident in the clause as a lexico-grammatical unit. While the three metafunctions are arguably universal to every language – every language user needs to be able to use language to construe experience, enact social relationships and create discourse – the means by which meaningful choices are lexico-grammtically realized is language specific.
Bio-statement:
Jonathan Webster
For more than ten years, Professor Jonathan Webster headed up the Department of Chinese, Translation and Linguistics at City University of Hong Kong. He is currently Director of The Halliday Centre for Intelligent Applications of Language Studies, which has the unique advantage of being the only research centre worldwide bearing the name of this distinguished, globally renowned scholar in linguistics, M.A.K. Halliday.
Professor Webster is the Editor of the Collected Works of several leading scholars, including M.A.K Halliday (Emeritus Professor of University of Sydney; founder of Systemic Functional Linguistics), Ruqaiya Hasan (Emeritus Professor, Macquarie University, Sydney), Sydney Lamb (Arnold Professor Emeritus of Linguistics and Cognitive Science, Rice University, Houston, Texas; founder of Stratificational Linguistics), and Braj B. Kachru (Emeritus Professor in Linguistics, University of Illinois; who pioneered development of the field of World Englishes).
He recently authored the book Understanding Verbal Art: A Functional Linguistic Approach, published by Springer; and co-authored (with M.A.K. Halliday) Text Linguistics: The how and why of meaning, published by Equinox UK.
In addition, He the founding Editor of Linguistics and the Human Sciences, an ESCI indexed journal devoted to exploring the relationships between linguistics and other areas of scholarly concern, including but not limited to history, sociology, politics, archaeology, religious studies, translation, and the study of art. The first issue appeared in July 2005, published by Equinox (UK). He is also one of the founding Editors – along with Professor Huang Guowen (Sun Yat-sen University) and Professor He Wei (University of Science and Technology, Beijing) – of the new Journal of World Languages, published by Routledge, Taylor & Francis; and is the Managing Editor of the journal WORD, the journal of the International Linguistics Association, headquartered in New York.
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