Jonathan J Webster
Biographic Data
| ID | 149972 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Jonathan J Webster |
| GIVEN NAMES | Jonathan J |
| FAMILY NAME | Webster |
| SIGNATURE | WEBSTER J J |
| AFFILIATIONS | City University of Hong Kong |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 13 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 7 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 12 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1998 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 2 |
Halliday, M. A. K.
For over half a century, Professor Michael Alexander Kirkwood (M. A. K.) has been engaged in practicing “appliable” linguistics. Approaching language from the vantage point of meaning and purpose, Halliday provides a theoretical framework, known as systemic functional linguistics (SFL), for dealing with questions about how and why we come to use language as we do for being and becoming who we are.
Halliday’s Categories Paper in Word: Origin of an Evolving Theory of Language
M.A.K. Halliday’s Categories of the Theory of Grammar (1961) was published in WORD (Vol. 17, Issue 2, pp. 241–292). Categories was Halliday’s first journal article following the completion of his doctoral dissertation six years earlier. Firth’s influence is evident in this paper, which Jim Martin describes as “generally landmarked as the founding paper for what evolved as systemic functional linguistics” (WORD, Vol. 62, Issue 1, pp. 35–58). What …
Kachru's redeeming myth of world Englishes
Michael Halliday once stated that all theories employ metaphors in order to express their essence, which might be restated as ‘every theory is a myth for what it is theorizing’. In his early work, Braj Kachru set out to creatively and critically ‘de‐mythologize’ the English canon, and in its stead introduced the new metaphor of the ‘Three Circles’, and the innovative, and redeeming, myth of ‘world Englishes’, changing the history of English studi…
A Comparative Study of Obama’s Closing Statements in the 2012 US Presidential Debates: Lessons Learned from a Systemic-Functional Analysis
Article A Comparative Study of Obama’s Closing Statements in the 2012 US Presidential Debates: Lessons Learned from a Systemic-Functional Analysis was published on March 1, 2016 in the journal Language and Semiotic Studies (volume 2, issue 1)
The Bloomsbury Companion to M. A. K. Halliday
The Bloomsbury Companion to M. A. K. Halliday is a comprehensive and accessible reference resource to one of the world’s leading and most influential linguists. Born in 1925, Halliday is the figure most responsible for the development of systemic functional linguistics (SFL). The impact of his work extends beyond linguistics, into the study of stylistics, computation linguistics, visual narrative and multimodal communication. He is considered a f…
Understanding Verbal Art: A Functional Linguistic Approach
To be continued: Meaning-Making in Serialized Manga as Functional-Multimodal Narrative
This paper discusses meaning-making in serialized adventure manga (Japanese comics) by examining its metafunctional organization. Manga, whose components cover a multimodal cline from graphics to verbals, is seen as a multimodal narrative whose features are mapped onto the different metafunctions: time - experiential, with diegetic time lapse defining the start point to construe experience; cause-effect - logical, with relative positioning of com…
The lexicogrammatical reflection of interpersonal relationship in conversation
This article reports an attempt to investigate, apart from the semantics and the pragmatics, how much the lexis and the grammar of a conversation can help extract interpersonal information about the interlocutors' orientations towards each other. The discourse analysed was extracted from a scene in Dan Brown's novel The Da Vinci Code and its motion picture adaptation. The adaptation of this scene is similar to the novel original in terms of the c…
Studies in Chinese language
Part 1: Medieval Chinese Grammar Part 2: Modern Chinese Grammar Part 3: Chinese Phonology Part 4: Grammar and Discourse Appendix Bibliography Index
Meaning making poetry: Words alone are certain good
The focus of this linguistic investigation is on the poetry of Edwin Thumboo, which has contributed much to the shaping and definition of Singapore's English language poetic canon. A systemic-functional approach is adopted for analysing several of Thumboo's poems, including "gods can die", "David", and "Conjunction", examining the poet's technique, or, as in the poet's own words, "the chiseling of Language, the rearranging of language, the sound,…
Studies in English Language
This is the seventh volume in the Collected Works of Professor M. A. K. Halliday: Studies in English Language. Topics covered in the papers from the section on "Theoretical foundations" include transitivity, theme-rhyme, mood, and modality in English. Other sections include papers on English intonation and grammar including discussion of word order in English and the complex structures typical of informal spontaneous conversation. The grammatical…
Clause alignment for Hong Kong legal texts: A lexical-based approach
In this paper we report on our recent work in clause alignment for English-Chinese bilingual legal texts using available lexical resources including a bilingual legal glossary and a bilingual dictionary, for the purpose of acquiring examples at various linguistic levels for example-based machine translation. We present our formulation of an appropriate measure for the similarity of a candidate pair of clauses with respect to matched lexical items…
The Poet's language: Foregrounding in Edwin Thumboo's gods can die
The poetry of Edwin Thumboo has contributed much to the shaping and definition of Singapore's English Language poetic canon. In this paper, I explore Thumboo's esthetic use of consistent foregrounding in the poem gods can die from three perspectives: propositional, textual and interpersonal. Foregrounding refers to the usage of certain linguistic devices for the purpose of attracting attention. In poetry, meaning and esthetic effect are unified t…
To be continued: Meaning-Making in Serialized Manga as Functional-Multimodal Narrative
This paper discusses meaning-making in serialized adventure manga (Japanese comics) by examining its metafunctional organization. Manga, whose components cover a multimodal cline from graphics to verbals, is seen as a multimodal narrative whose features are mapped onto the different metafunctions: time - experiential, with diegetic time lapse defining the start point to construe experience; cause-effect - logical, with relative positioning of com…
The lexicogrammatical reflection of interpersonal relationship in conversation
This article reports an attempt to investigate, apart from the semantics and the pragmatics, how much the lexis and the grammar of a conversation can help extract interpersonal information about the interlocutors' orientations towards each other. The discourse analysed was extracted from a scene in Dan Brown's novel The Da Vinci Code and its motion picture adaptation. The adaptation of this scene is similar to the novel original in terms of the c…
Clause alignment for Hong Kong legal texts: A lexical-based approach
In this paper we report on our recent work in clause alignment for English-Chinese bilingual legal texts using available lexical resources including a bilingual legal glossary and a bilingual dictionary, for the purpose of acquiring examples at various linguistic levels for example-based machine translation. We present our formulation of an appropriate measure for the similarity of a candidate pair of clauses with respect to matched lexical items…
The Poet's language: Foregrounding in Edwin Thumboo's gods can die
The poetry of Edwin Thumboo has contributed much to the shaping and definition of Singapore's English Language poetic canon. In this paper, I explore Thumboo's esthetic use of consistent foregrounding in the poem gods can die from three perspectives: propositional, textual and interpersonal. Foregrounding refers to the usage of certain linguistic devices for the purpose of attracting attention. In poetry, meaning and esthetic effect are unified t…
The Poet's language: Foregrounding in Edwin Thumboo's gods can die
The poetry of Edwin Thumboo has contributed much to the shaping and definition of Singapore's English Language poetic canon. In this paper, I explore Thumboo's esthetic use of consistent foregrounding in the poem gods can die from three perspectives: propositional, textual and interpersonal. Foregrounding refers to the usage of certain linguistic devices for the purpose of attracting attention. In poetry, meaning and esthetic effect are unified t…
Clause alignment for Hong Kong legal texts: A lexical-based approach
In this paper we report on our recent work in clause alignment for English-Chinese bilingual legal texts using available lexical resources including a bilingual legal glossary and a bilingual dictionary, for the purpose of acquiring examples at various linguistic levels for example-based machine translation. We present our formulation of an appropriate measure for the similarity of a candidate pair of clauses with respect to matched lexical items…
Studies in English Language
This is the seventh volume in the Collected Works of Professor M. A. K. Halliday: Studies in English Language. Topics covered in the papers from the section on "Theoretical foundations" include transitivity, theme-rhyme, mood, and modality in English. Other sections include papers on English intonation and grammar including discussion of word order in English and the complex structures typical of informal spontaneous conversation. The grammatical…
Studies in Chinese language
Part 1: Medieval Chinese Grammar Part 2: Modern Chinese Grammar Part 3: Chinese Phonology Part 4: Grammar and Discourse Appendix Bibliography Index
Meaning making poetry: Words alone are certain good
The focus of this linguistic investigation is on the poetry of Edwin Thumboo, which has contributed much to the shaping and definition of Singapore's English language poetic canon. A systemic-functional approach is adopted for analysing several of Thumboo's poems, including "gods can die", "David", and "Conjunction", examining the poet's technique, or, as in the poet's own words, "the chiseling of Language, the rearranging of language, the sound,…
The lexicogrammatical reflection of interpersonal relationship in conversation
This article reports an attempt to investigate, apart from the semantics and the pragmatics, how much the lexis and the grammar of a conversation can help extract interpersonal information about the interlocutors' orientations towards each other. The discourse analysed was extracted from a scene in Dan Brown's novel The Da Vinci Code and its motion picture adaptation. The adaptation of this scene is similar to the novel original in terms of the c…
The Bloomsbury Companion to M. A. K. Halliday
The Bloomsbury Companion to M. A. K. Halliday is a comprehensive and accessible reference resource to one of the world’s leading and most influential linguists. Born in 1925, Halliday is the figure most responsible for the development of systemic functional linguistics (SFL). The impact of his work extends beyond linguistics, into the study of stylistics, computation linguistics, visual narrative and multimodal communication. He is considered a f…
Understanding Verbal Art: A Functional Linguistic Approach
To be continued: Meaning-Making in Serialized Manga as Functional-Multimodal Narrative
This paper discusses meaning-making in serialized adventure manga (Japanese comics) by examining its metafunctional organization. Manga, whose components cover a multimodal cline from graphics to verbals, is seen as a multimodal narrative whose features are mapped onto the different metafunctions: time - experiential, with diegetic time lapse defining the start point to construe experience; cause-effect - logical, with relative positioning of com…
A Comparative Study of Obama’s Closing Statements in the 2012 US Presidential Debates: Lessons Learned from a Systemic-Functional Analysis
Article A Comparative Study of Obama’s Closing Statements in the 2012 US Presidential Debates: Lessons Learned from a Systemic-Functional Analysis was published on March 1, 2016 in the journal Language and Semiotic Studies (volume 2, issue 1)
Kachru's redeeming myth of world Englishes
Michael Halliday once stated that all theories employ metaphors in order to express their essence, which might be restated as ‘every theory is a myth for what it is theorizing’. In his early work, Braj Kachru set out to creatively and critically ‘de‐mythologize’ the English canon, and in its stead introduced the new metaphor of the ‘Three Circles’, and the innovative, and redeeming, myth of ‘world Englishes’, changing the history of English studi…
Halliday, M. A. K.
For over half a century, Professor Michael Alexander Kirkwood (M. A. K.) has been engaged in practicing “appliable” linguistics. Approaching language from the vantage point of meaning and purpose, Halliday provides a theoretical framework, known as systemic functional linguistics (SFL), for dealing with questions about how and why we come to use language as we do for being and becoming who we are.
Halliday’s Categories Paper in Word: Origin of an Evolving Theory of Language
M.A.K. Halliday’s Categories of the Theory of Grammar (1961) was published in WORD (Vol. 17, Issue 2, pp. 241–292). Categories was Halliday’s first journal article following the completion of his doctoral dissertation six years earlier. Firth’s influence is evident in this paper, which Jim Martin describes as “generally landmarked as the founding paper for what evolved as systemic functional linguistics” (WORD, Vol. 62, Issue 1, pp. 35–58). What …
Linguistics (10 works) · Philosophy (8 works) · Computer Science (6 works) · Art (4 works) · Epistemology (4 works) · Literature (4 works) · Psychology (4 works) · Linguistic Variation and Morphology (3 works) · Philosophy (3 works) · Sociology (3 works)