YARU ZHOU (NORTHWESTERN POLYTECHNICAL UNIVERSITY)

COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS OF HALLIDAY’S METAFUNCTION THEORY IN LANGUAGE AND WITTGENSTEIN’S LANGUAGE PHILOSOPHY : INTERCULTURAL COMMUNICATION AND GLOBAL COMPETENCIES

Wittgenstein elevated the study of language to new philosophical heights with concepts such as “meaning is use,” “language games,” “family resemblance,” and “anti-private language.” Halliday revealed many philosophical implications in his Systemic Functional Linguistics theory. Linking the two fields, language serves as a common research focus in both the philosophy of language and linguistics. However, the similarities and differences in language perspectives between the philosophy of language and linguistics are still not clarified. This article discusses the integration and collision of the views of language between Wittgenstein’s philosophical views on language and Halliday’s metafunction theory in language. From the perspectives of language philosophy and Systemic Functional Linguistics, this paper explores the essence of language and grammar, and an explanation of the philosophy of language in Halliday’s functional linguistics to reveal the origin of Systemic Functional Linguistics and the use theory of language philosophy. After reviewing the important theories put forward by the two scholars, it is found that although the two scholars differ significantly on the cognition of language rules. As far as language itself is concerned, Wittgenstein and Halliday both emphasize the sociality of language. Specifically speaking, Wittgenstein thinks that language is use, while Halliday holds the view of language function. From this point of view, Wittgenstein’s philosophy of language provides the philosophical basis for Halliday’s philosophy of language, and Halliday also systematically develops Wittgenstein’s philosophy of language with metafunction theory in Systemic Functional Grammar.

1． Zhou Yaru, Female, Ph.D. student at the School of Foreign Studies, Northwestern Polytechnical University. Research Interests: academic discourse, corpus Linguistics. Address: Northwestern Polytechnical University (Chang’an Campus), Chang’an District, Xi’an, Shaanxi Province, 710000, China. Email: 2021204284@mail.nwpu.edu.cn Phone: +86 18161958772