The Eligibility of the Application of Halliday’s Functional Linguistic Theory into TESOL Courses in China
1904875 PANG Bo
I.	Introduction
Peter Doughty believed that “Educational failure is primarily linguistic failure”, and in order to fix the problem, many teachers in schools and in colleges of further education now wish to make use of a linguistic approach to the language in so far as it is relevant to these problems (Halliday,1973, p3). 

This essay looks at the eligibility of the application of Halliday’s functional linguistic theory into TESOL courses. The first part of the essay is a brief introduction on the structure and main contents of the essay. The second and third parts review on both Halliday’s functional linguistic theory and Chomsky’s generative theory. The fourth part of this essay is a comparison and contrast between Chomsky’s theory of transformational generative grammar and Halliday’s theory of functional systemic grammar, which may justify Halliday’s functional approach in practical English teaching and give the legal and nature position to the functional theory as a guide in TESOL courses. The fifth part of this essay therefore, looks at the application of Halliday’s functional approach in practical English teaching in China. In the final part, this essay may propose suggestions and implications of the application of Halliday’s functional theory into language teaching.

II.	Halliday’s Functional Linguistic Theory
Halliday refers to Grammar as a functional one instead of formal one because it is functional in three distinct but closely related senses in its interpretation of texts, of the system and of the elements of linguistic structures. According to Halliday,‘ it is functional in the sense that it is designed to account for how language is used.’(1985, p1) The fundamental components of meaning in language are functional components. All languages are organized around two major kinds of meaning, either ideational and interpersonal, which are now referred to as metafunctions. ‘Each element in a language is explained by reference to its function in the total linguistic system.’ (Halliday, 1985, p.xiii) From formal/generative linguists’ point of view, the term ‘syntax’ is used to replace grammar. Because, in their opinion, syntax(form) is opposed to semantics(meaning). On the other hand, Halliday proposes that a systemic theory is a theory of meaning as choice, by which a language is ‘interpreted as networks of interlocking options. […] Whatever is chosen in one system becomes the way in to a set of choices in another.’(Halliday, 1985, p.xiv).  

In 1970s, the individual is considered as ‘the focus of a complex of human relationships which collectively define the content of his social behavior’, which in linguistic field means ‘linguistic behaviour is a large part of the behavior of human beings in relation to their social environment’. Thus, Halliday believes that language is ‘social behavior an acknowledged concern of modern linguistics, and not limited to the study of instances’(Halliday, 1973, p.48), and regards language as ‘social behaviour’ and treats it as ‘a form of behaviour potential.’(Halliday, 1973, p.51) Therefore, potential of language is a meaning potential, which is ‘the linguistic realization of the behaviour potential.’ Halliday argues that ‘Language is as it is because of its function in the social structure’(Halliday, 1973, p.65). He further proposed very generalized functions of language, which are the ideational, the interpersonal and the textual. The ideational function is related to the content of language as a way to express of experience, both externally and internally. The interpersonal is language as the mediator of role. The third component, the textual enables the speaker to organise his utterance in order to make sense in the context. (Halliday, 1973, p.66)

All in all, Functionalism is an important school of modern cultural anthropology. The first key word of this school is function, which may include the function of language in communicative behavior, the role of language in society, the role of language in literature and functions of language in different linguistic levels. The purpose of functionalism is to demonstrate that language function determines language form, and that people's grammatical knowledge mainly comes from acquired experience through application and practice. The second key word is social context. It emphasizes the social attributes of language, advocating that the functional interpretation of information transmitted by language forms and linguistic phenomena within social and cultural context rather than pure language forms. Its purpose is to describe and explain the grammatical and semantic linguistic features of various languages through the functions that language should implement in social communication. The third key word is systemic. Here, by systemic, Halliday means that language is not a kind of knowledge or competence of human but a social behavior of making choices (rather than generate) from a range allowed by cultural and social contexts.

III.	Chomskyan Linguistic Theory

In 1957, Chomsky’s landmark work Syntactic Structures marked him a significant role in linguistics by remodeling the study of language and also marked the origin of transformational generative grammar (TG Grammar). Later, he proposed his major theory as universal grammar (UG grammar). It can be also regarded as "mental grammar", and therefore is very different from functional, descriptive and pedagogical grammars. 

The biological devices where Universal Grammar is based on is in human’s brain so that a certain set of structural rules are innate to humans, independent of sensory experience. By nature people are born, equipped with a device loaded with the comprehension of law of language. With the help of this linguistic device and more linguistic stimuli received in the course of psychological development, children’s knowledge on specific grammar rules enriches. Therefore, how well a native speaker can speak his/her native language relies on his/her grammatical competence which is actually an instinct and his/her exposure to his/her mother togue. Chomsky himself concluded, ‘Evidently, development of language in the individual must involve three factors: genetic endowment, which sets limits on the attainable languages, thereby making language acquisition possible; external data, converted to the experience that selects one or another language within a narrow range; principles not specific to the Faculty of Language.’(Chomsky, 2007.) Therefore, grammar of a language is an account of the grammatical competence instead of performance of the native speakers of that language. Grammatical competence is defined as the native speakers’ tacit knowledge of the grammar of their language (Chomsky, 1965). 

But actually, Chomsky was neither among the first to come up with generative theories as part of a natural language nor the first tried to explore the laws of language that are universally applied in all languages. Robert Kilwardby was concerned with the nature of language in general and excluded considerations of the characteristics of particular languages, which he believed to be ‘as irrelevant to a science of grammar as the material of the measuring rod or the physical characteristics of objects were to geometry.’ While Alsted, a German philosopher in about 1630 proposed the term ’general grammar’ as contrast to special grammar whose features are common to all languages. He defined general grammar as the pattern norm of every particular grammar whatsoever. (Fromkin,etal, 2003, pp18-19.)

To distinguish the general law of all languages and that of a specific language within the framework of Universal Grammar, Chomsky formulated a ‘principles and parameters’ terminology, where refers as the general principles of syntactical structure of language and the specific rules of particular languages. Many linguists have worked within this framework, and for a period of time it was considered the dominant form of mainstream generative linguistics. (Newmeyer,2004) The principal idea of this mechanism is that a person's syntactic knowledge can be decided by two factors: A series of universal syntactical rules that are common to all languages: for example, a complete sentence must always have a predicate and a subject; A knowledge on variations of specific language rules such as a third person agreement in present tense in English.

In short, Chomsky's transformational linguistic school considers language to be an abstract knowledge of actual discourse. Language learning is a complex interaction between innate and empirical factors, and experience is secondary and subordinate. Language competence is inherently present in healthy individual brains through biological genes, that is, people's grammatical knowledge is determined by biological genes. As long as one has basic language skills, he can understand as many sentences as he can. It uses interpretive scientific theories to explore the mystery of the relationship between human language and the brain. And it is committed to the characterization of the formal features of natural language instead of language functions. Its core task is to describe the formal relationships between grammatical components. The description of these formal relationships is independent of the description of any semantic and pragmatic characteristics of these components. Chomskyan linguists pay attention to theory, logic and abstraction in languages and hence value and weigh cognitive, psychological aspects over social aspect of language. Transformational grammar regards language as an inherited gift, and emphasizes its formal structure as well as its physical and psychological characteristics. In their describing language, emphasis is placed on formality, and on language structure, especially the autonomy and independence of syntactic structure. According to Chomsky, ‘linguistic theory is concerned with an ideal speaker-listener in a completely homogeneous speech community, who knows its language perfectly and is unaffected by such grammatically irrelevant conditions as memory limitations, distractions, shifts of attention and interest, and errors (random or characteristic) in applying his knowledge of the language in actual performance.’ (Chomsky, 1965, p. 3)

IV.	A Brief Compare and Contrast of Two Theories
Chomsky regards the generative nature of sentences as the most prominent feature of language. His focus is on the mechanism of generation of sentences. The main task of language theory is to provide people with a criterion of grammar. Language endorses biological properties, and linguistics is a natural science. It sets its central idea as All sentences can be generated by the grammar of a certain language. Therefore, language competence and language use are two clearly-separate concepts. Chomsky believes that language competence is the inherent knowledge of speakers of a language. Therefore, language proficiency and language use are not consistent: as long as one masters the grammar of a language completely, he can have the competence of that language. Language competence itself is an idealized language concept that can be generalised by grammatical patterns. It is psychological rather than social and behavioural. Chomskyan linguistics first treats language as a structural entity, but it also aims to establish a formal model that can express language knowledge shared by all human beings. It advocates seeking an explanation of the nature of language within the grammatical system, and believes that linguistic phenomena that can be explained from a functional or pragmatic perspective are not sufficient to reveal the nature of language. Only human-specific innate language capabilities that are independent of other cognitive abilities can explain language nature. 

The system-functional linguistic school represented by Halliday studied language from the perspective of anthropology and sociology, regarding language as part of the social system. Functionalist linguistics weighs social and cultural contexts over psychological process. It emphasizes the function of language and the relationship between language and society and culture, and believes that language is a reflection of processes and things in the subjective and objective world. The acquisition of language knowledge comes from social behaviors. The formalist school of linguistics studies the structure of language on the basis of semantics and function. Halliday believes that grammar is essentially a semantic system and provides meaning potential through conceptual, interpersonal, and textual functions. The three functions of language coexist in syntactic structures. Language is a systemic network composed of several subsystems that people can choose from, that is, the potential of meaning. Therefore, the functionalists regard semantic research as a very important and indispensable part of linguistics.

In short, the two linguistic schools vary in their definition and view on language. Chomskyan linguists view language as a biological trait of human being which is inherited rather than cultivated. They pay more attention to the forms rather than its social and functional links to the contexts. However, Functional linguists view language as a social behavior rather than a biological and psychological subject, and they pay more attention to the meanings where functions in context may achieve are based rather than forms. For Chomskyan linguists, language is GENERATED according to certain rules (both principles and parameters) while for functional linguists, language is a process of CHOICE WITHIN A CONTEXT. An example to illustrate the point is that ‘My father is a man.’ From Chomsky’s point of view, this sentence is perfectly legitimate. However, from Halliday’s perspective, the sentence does not make any sense. Because a father must be a male human-being.

Chomskyan linguists overly emphasizes the universal factors of languages and therefore ignores the particularity, which advocates studying the structure of language from the perspective of form alone, without paying attention to the role of semantics and function in syntactic description, and ignoring he application and function of language, separating language from language users. Chomsky only looks at language from the perspective of human (isolated from social context) and explores the relationship between human and language. 

Halliday emphasizes social functions, interpreting the universality of languages from the perspective of logical scope, without the consideration of the influence of biological feature of human beings onto languages. It is well known that the study of the nature of language must consider the relationship between language and biological humans, because Therefore, Halliday's systematic functional linguistics only illustrates the essence of language from functional perspective generally with linguistic phenomena. 

In fact, the two perspectives do not go against each other, instead, they complement each other. Because, human beings endorse with biological and social attributes. Take ‘My father is a man’ as example again. A sentence can function only when it is both formally legitimate and meaningful.
 
But, as for the position of both theories in the development of linguistic studies, it is crystal clear that, Transformational Generative Grammar is referred to as ‘Chomskyan Revolution’ and the origin of modern linguistics. To some extent, Chomskyan linguistic is the mainstream of linguistic studies in the world. Functional linguistic is only one of the branches and schools of linguistics. The reason why it is highlightened especially in Chinese academia is that Halliday himself majored in Chinese, who later became the tutor of famous Chinese linguistic scholars such as Hu Zhuanglin. But it is not to say that Halliday’s approach is far less important than Chomsky’s. While Chomsky only focuses on language itself, Halliday’s research matters more other than language, especially in teaching. 

V.	Functional Approach in Teaching – Taking TESOL Courses in China as Example
Their different views on language may lead to their disagreements on language acquisition and teaching. Chomskyan linguists stress on forms and the mastery of grammar (either in principle or in parameters). While, functional linguists focus on functions and meanings of language.

In a word, Chomskyan linguists pay more attention to ‘LANGUANGE USAGE’ while Halliday’s functional approach pay more attention to ‘LANGUAGE USE.’ From these two conceptions, derive two teaching approaches which are popular in China’s TESOL courses, Grammar-Translation teaching method stressing on the form of language, and functional teaching methods (such as genre/discourse analysis method and communicative method) emphasizing the practice of language in application.

Halliday admitted as well ’a functional approach to language means, first of all, investigating how language is used’ by trying to find out the purposes of language serving for us, how to achieve these purposes through practice. (1973, p.7) He believes that there are do’s and don’ts of grammar to a person ‘who is linguistically unsuccessful is like teaching a starving man how to hold a knife and fork.’ He doesn’t deny the importance of ritual element in the use of language, however, ’primarily good manners was of little relevance to educational needs.’ (Halliday, 1973, p. 10) Instead, there are certain models of language relevant: instrumental model, regulatory model, interactional model, personal model, heuristic model, imaginative model and representational model.(Halliday, 1973, pp.11-16) To be specific, instrumental model refers to the language function of satisfaction of material needs; The regulatory function means that language in the control of behavior. The interactional function is that of getting along with others; The personal function is related to the expression of self. The heuristic is the use of language to learn; The imaginative is that of ‘let’s pretend’ The representational is that of the communication of content. (Halliday, 1973, p.17) In this connection, ‘educational failure is often, in a very general and rather deep sense, language failure’. Because the student ‘[…]is not using language in the ways required by the school[…], and it is likely that underlying the failure to master these skills is a deeper and more general problem, a fundamental mismatch between[…] linguistic capabilities and the demands that are made upon them.’(Halliday, 1973, p18). However, to link educational failure to linguistic failure is only the first step, ‘the most immediately accessible cause of educational failure is to be sought in language. […] A minimum requirement for an educationally relevant approach to language is that it takes account of […] linguistic experience, defining this experience in terms of its richest potential and noting where there may be differences of orientation which could cause […] difficulties.’ (Halliday, 1973, pp.19-20). In Halliday opinion, a student should be surrounded by language in use, a ‘text’ within context, instead of in the form of grammars and dictionaries, with he himself isolated from his awareness of language function. (Halliday, 1973, pp.20)

One of the most prominent approaches in adopted in teaching is Discourse Analysis teaching method, which is based on Halliday’s cohesion theory. The topic of cohesion first appeared in Hasan, was expanded in Halliday & Hasan (1975), and revised in Halliday (1985), has been the most useful constituent of discourse analysis. Generally speaking, it is a matter of looking carefully at the connectives or missing connectives between sentences, both notionally and in their linguistic substance, and in the case of an informative or social text deciding how far to intervene. (Newmark, p.65) 

Halliday defines cohesion as semantic ‘relations of meaning that exist within the text, and that define it as a text’ and ‘part of the system of a language’ which is ‘expressed partly through the grammar and partly through the vocabulary.’ Therefore, there is ’grammatical cohesion and lexical cohesion.’  (Halliday, 1976, pp.4-6) Halliday further systematizes the concept of cohesion by classifying it into different types: ’reference, substitution, ellipsis’ being grammatical, ‘conjunction’ being on the borderline of the two, and ‘lexical cohesion’ itself. (Halliday, 1976, p.13) To be specific, in English, there are personal references ‘by means of function in the speech situation, demonstrative reference ‘by means of location, on a scale of proximity’ and comparative references which are ’indirect reference by means of identity or similarity’. (Halliday, 1976, p.31) According to Halliday, different from reference, ‘substitution is a relation in the wording rather than in the meaning’. In English, there are three types of substitution: ‘nominal, verbal, and clausal’. (Halliday, 1976, pp,89-90) ‘Substitution and ellipsis are very similar to each other.’ The latter can be ’something left unsaid ’[…] ‘but understood nevertheless’’. (Halliday, 1976, p.142) While conjunctions ‘are cohesive not in themselves but indirectly by virtue of their specific meanings.’(Halliday, 1976, p.226) Four categories of conjunctions are found ’additive, adversative, causal and temporal’.（Halliday, 1976, p.238)  In general, there are two types of lexical cohesion: reiteration achieved by ’synonym, superordinate, or general word’(Halliday, 1976, p. 284) and collocation. Although cohesion is only a ‘necessary though not a sufficient condition for the creation of text’, it ‘helps to create text’ by its role providing ‘texture’. (Halliday, 1976, pp.298-299)

Halliday argues that discourse is a unit of meanings instead of that of form. Discourse analysis therefore emphasizes on the connection and structure between sentences rather than single sentences. Sentences in a text are not disorderly, but are regularly organized according to coherence and the potential of topic development (Qin, 1997). Discourse analysis focuses on linguistic forms, discourse relations, cohesion, coherence, speech acts, discourse structure and genre analysis (Huang, 2001).

Previously, the teaching concept of TESOL courses in China has gradually convert from the previous grammar-translation method to genre teaching method. That is the application of genre and genre analysis theory to the teaching of TESOL courses (Hu, 2001), which itself is a transformation from focusing on form (grammar and translation) to focusing on text content (meaning). The purpose is to allow students to accumulate more knowledge other than language skills when learning language through the content of discourse. Thus, students can expose to humanities more and master more extra-disciplinary knowledge. The teaching goals of TESOL course are no longer confined to the improvement of language skills, and more attention is paid to the cultivation of students' ability of critical thinking and cross-cultural communication. 

In recent years, Wen Qiufang (2015) moved one more step forward and proposed a theoretical system for constructing an ‘Production-oriented approach’ in TESOL. The system consists of three parts: first, the teaching concepts of learning-centered principle, learning-using integrated principle and whole-person education principle; second, the teaching hypotheses of output-driven, input-enabled and selective learning; third, the teaching processes taking teacher as mediator, consisting of three stages: motivating, enabling and assessing. It confirms that the purpose and expectation of language learning should be in production(use). In other words, even in reading courses, speaking and writing skills should be all included in the teaching objectives. The role of the teacher must convert from ‘knowledge inculcator’ to class organizer, knowledge intermediary, and learning collaborator. Thus, reading and analysis is just a beginning, instead of the end of the entire learning process. 


According to Hu Zhuanglin (2001), both the forward strategy and the reverse strategy can be used in the teaching process. The former starts from the details of the language, which belongs to the induction. The latter decodes the discourse from general to specific, first discussing the overall connotation and logic of the discourse and then focusing on the details, which belongs to the deduction. Teachers can introduce Socratic questioning (Yang Lifang, 2015) into the class. Questions raised in class should not be limited into language level. Assessment should focus on language use rather than language usage and grammar.

This Production-orientated Approach reinforces the importance of language use and the application and function of language in teaching and verifies that Halliday’s functional linguistics over years is still eligible in language teaching. 

VI.	Conclusion
Since ‘Chomskyan Revelution’ in 1950s, there have been two major linguistic schools – formalist school and functionalist school, represented by Chomsky’s generative approach and Halliday’s systemic functional approach respectively. The former one weighs the biological nature and forms of language. Therefore, from Chomsky’s point of view, linguistics is natural science, and language is generated according to both universal and particular linguistic rules. Human beings by nature are inherited with the universal language competence. While Halliday believes that language is a social behavior in context. It brings linguistic studies into the category of social science. The function of language relies on meanings rather than forms. Language is a process of choices rather than generated. The two seem to be opposing each other. But in fact, they both explores the nature of language and hence are complementary. 

Both Chomsky and Halliday contributed to language teaching. However, their conceptions in teaching may vary because of their differences in understanding the nature of language. Halliday stresses on the function of languages and therefore pays more attention to language use. He proposed the topic of cohesion in linguistic studies, and developed discourse analysis theory which can be adopted into the process of teaching.

In China, Halliday enjoys more attentions. Partly, it is because his close connection with China and Chinese linguistic scholars. More importantly, his functionally approach is verified to be eligible method in TESOL courses focusing more on cohesion and content of discourse. 

Wen Qiufang, Hu Zhuanglin extended Halliday’s theory in language teaching within the context of English courses in China. Hu examed the usage of discourse analysis theory in teaching while Wen Wen proposed a theoretical of Production-oriented Approach in Language teaching and further developed the theory from the perspective of language use and therefore fulfilled his theory in teaching environment. 



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