Ruqaiya Hasan – författare

Cohesion in English is concerned with a relatively neglected part of the linguistic system: its resources for text construction, the range of meanings that are speciffically associated with relating what is being spoken or written to its semantic environment. A principal component of these resources is 'cohesion'. This book studies the cohesion that arises from semantic relations between sentences. Reference from one to the other, repetition of word meanings, the conjunctive force of but, so, then and the like are considered. Further, it describes a method for analysing and coding sentences, which is applied to specimen texts.

Over the course of history, humankind has relied on the power of language to impose regularities on experience and bring "the environment more within our power to control." Professor M.A.K. Halliday goes on to refers to this conceptual shifting as "the Knight's move in language."In this joint work, developed in collaboration with the late Professor Ruqaiya Hasan and edited by Professor Jonathan J. Webster, metaphor is used to understand how language manipulates and creates our reality in very real and powerful ways. Whether it is the "art" in verbal art or the "science” in verbal science, through the metaphor-making potential available in language what is being crafted are hypotheses about the world we experience. The semiogenic power of language is so great that it enables us to define "the very basic experience of being human". Halliday adopts Mukarovsky's term "deautomatization" to interpret the grammar in front of you in ways that go beyond its direct relational function. So much scientific theory would not be possible without this semiogenic potential. It is the ability to reconstrue our commonsense version of events into a metaphorical world where things can be observed, investigated and explained. This book highlights the central importance of grammatical metaphor and realigns the connections between the upper strata of meaning and the strata below lexicogrammar.

This work comprises a collection of the writings of Ruqaiya Hasan, an influential figure in the systemic functional linguistic learning school. It discusses the relation between text and context and the realization of context in language; the ‘network’, which is outlined as analytic tool which can be applied at two strata of language, the lexico-grammatical and the semantic; as well as aspects of the social structure that are implicated in the way cultures and subcultures express themselves.