Language as a Social Symbol: Interpreting Language and Meaning from a Social Perspective

Author: Han Li-de
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2001-09-01
Features: This book covers almost all important aspects of the author's linguistic theory and is a must-read for understanding the formation and development of the basic ideas of Systemic Functional Linguistics. It includes 13 articles written by the author from 1972 to 1976. There are two points that need to be noted from the beginning. First, the 13 articles written at different times are compiled into a monograph because they share a common theme: they view language as a social symbol and attempt to interpret the nature and meaning of language from social and cultural perspectives. Second, there are some overlapping content in these articles, such as the topics of register, context, linguistic system, and the relationship between language and education, which appear multiple times and even run throughout the entire book. Therefore, when writing the preface, we did not strictly follow the order of the articles but broke through the boundaries of chapters, focusing on several key issues to evaluate and help readers quickly understand and grasp the essence of the book.