For nearly half a century, Professor M. A. K. Halliday has been enriching the discipline of linguistics with his keen insights into the social semiotic phenomenon we call language. This ten-volume series presents the seminal works of Professor Halliday. This fifth volume of the collected works explores 'the semantic character of scientific discourse'. It opens with a new essay by Professor Halliday in which he looks at the power of language to make meaning, and addresses the question 'how big is a language'? In the essays that follow Halliday argues that there is no single register of science, but there are numerous scientific discourses. Looking at the history of scientific discourse it is possible to see new strategies evolving which are grounded in processes of metaphor. These grammatical metaphors increase the power that a language has for theorising and hence it is within these metaphors that the power of language resides.
Author Biography
Professor Jonathan J. Webster is Head of the Department of Chinese, Translation and Linguistics at the City University of Hong Kong. He is also the Managing Editor of the International Linguistics Association's journal WORD, and the editor of the forthcoming Journal of World Languages (2014). M.A.K. Halliday was Emeritus Professor of Linguistics at the University of Sydney.
