Learning how to mean: M. A. K. halliday and the language of early childhood

M. A. K. Halliday’s work on child language development spans over 40 years and continues to inform and inspire researchers and educators around the world. In 1975, Halliday published his groundbreaking case study of his son Nigel’s early language development. Having already developed his systemic functional linguistic (SFL) theory of language structure and function, he looked for the origins of the adult linguistic system in the earliest utterances of his infant son. The chapter begins with an overview of the three abstract functions that shape the organization of the adult language. The next section traces the origins of these functions back to the first acts of meaning produced by infants in their first year. The chapter then follows the child’s gradual reinterpretation of the functions of language over the ensuing two to three years. At this point, another feature of SFL theory that has implications for early childhood pedagogy is introduced; that is, the ways in which certain features of the material situation—the nature of the activity and the relationship between the participants—shapes, and is shaped by, the language choices of the speaker. The chapter concludes by suggesting some implications of Halliday’s model of language and its development for early childhood pedagogy and practice.