China-Australia Relations, History & Politics

M.A.K. Halliday’s Role in Shaping a Shared Future of China and Australia

Hu Zhuanglin (胡壮麟)

Peking University, China

I am honored and glad to be invited to attend the “Peking University-Sydney University Forum 2018” today. Since the forum mainly focuses on the value and role of education in shaping a shared future of China and Australia, and since I am an educator in linguistics, what I can do is to talk about the development of linguistics discipline in China through the role of Prof. M.A.K. Halliday, the former head of the Department of Linguistics, the University of Sydney. Of course, this is also a chance for me to recall my teacher, who just passed away at 8 p.m., April 15, 2018 at the age of 93.

1. Prof. Halliday’s Strictness and Leniency in Supervising Chinese Students

In January 1979, according to an agreement reached between China and Australia, a group of 9 Chinese middle-aged and young teachers were accepted by Sydney University as exchange scholars to receive their advanced education. I, and two other members of the group, chose to study in the Department of Linguistics. It was Prof. Halliday, the then Chairman of the Department, encouraged us to do MA degree at the same time. In addition to this, we should take two more courses than the local participants in each term or semester. Seeing that we were puzzled, Prof. Halliday explained to us patiently: “I know quite well the academic level of university education in China and also know you Chinese students all work very hard.” He then explained to us that many Australian postgraduates were learning part-time because they still had to teach in their schools. As for those young postgraduates, they had also to work part-time in order to pay for their fees or living allowance, especially during the long holidays between the two terms. He further pointed out that we Chinese participants all received government scholarship according to the agreement between the two governments. Therefore, we didn’t need to do part-time jobs and would have enough time to take more courses. Thus, Mr. Long Rijin and I did earn all the credits and finished the final paper required for the University’s MA（Pass）degree in one year， and moved on to finish MA (Honors) the second year.

Another story is about our performance in his seminar. When we attended Prof. Halliday’s lectures we tended to ask him a lot of questions, especially those related to the Chinese language. Very often Prof. Halliday would remind us, “This is seminar. It’s better for you not to ask me questions all the time. You should first ask and discuss these questions among yourselves. So far as I know, the term ‘postgraduate’ in Chinese is ‘yanjiusheng’ (a learner of doing research), that is to say, you should learn to do research and analyze questions first through your own efforts. You should not just sit on the bench, listening to lectures and taking notes.” It goes without saying that we did benefit quite a lot later and in our future career from his advice.

2. Prof. Halliday’s Honest, Practical and Realistic Attitude towards His Own Achievements

As we all know, M.A.K. Halliday got his doctoral degree with Prof. Firth as his supervisor at Cambridge University in 1955. Because of this, the western academic world always saw him as a successor of the London School and called him a “Firthian”. It was in 2011 that I found in many of Prof. Halliday’s interviews taken after his retirement1, he always reminded the interviewer(s) that he got his linguistic knowledge and research methods mainly through two Chinese scholars, Wang Li (1900—1986)and Luo Changpei (1899—1958). This is “the first input” of his academic thoughts.2 In a 2010 interview, he simply used the passive voice in his reply, “I was called a Firthian by my friends… But it was not just him; I was also influenced by one professor in China in particular. His name was Wang Li.”3

Personally，I had the chance to ask Prof. Halliday the following question, “If you continued to do research on the Chinese language after graduation, but not English, would it be difficult for you to develop your systemic-functional linguistics? Would you fail to be a world renowned scholar?” There were two points clearly mentioned in his reply, one being that he himself would choose to go on with his study in Chinese， but his university wanted him to focus on English. Another point was more important. He said, although his corpus changed from the Chinese language to English，the basic theoretical framework, the guiding principles and research methods had already been harbored in his mind when he did research on the Chinese language. This confirmed the enlightening effects of those Chinese supervisors.

In passing, I would also mention one of my encounters with Prof. Halliday. Once I had a talk with him in his office. He took a book written by a Chinese linguist Gao Mingkai (1911—1965) down from his shelf and told me: “Gao Mingkai’s book is also worth reading.” Shamefully, I didn’t keep his words in my mind at that time. It was in 2016 when I wrote a paper about the Chinese origin of Michael Halliday’s academic thoughts, I came to notice that he was also influenced by Gao Mingkai on many academic issues, and came to recall the deep meaning expressed by Prof. Halliday’s advice in 1979.4

Thus, I was quite impressed by Prof. Halliday’s good quality to acknowledge the truth. His honesty set a good example to us.

3. Prof. Halliday’s Love for China and His China Dream

As it is known to all, Prof. Halliday wrote a short story about his imaginary visit to China when he was just 4 years old, and chose to learn the Chinese language in the army after leaving school. He received his undergraduate and postgraduate education at Peking University and Lingnan University respectively.5 Here, I would like to restrict myself to two points.

First, he was the only foreign scholar highly acknowledged and supported by universities in China so far, which can be illustrated as follows. He was offered Guest Professorship of Peking University in 1996. “The Halliday Intelligence Research Center of Appliable Linguistics” was established by Hong Kong City University in 2006. He was awarded Honorary Doctorate degree by Beijing Normal University in 2011. “The Halliday Center of Linguistic Publications” was set up by Sun Yat-sen University in 2013.

The second point is the setting up of the International Halliday-Hasan Fund for Linguistics” at Beijing Normal University in April 2015. Prof. Halliday then donated all his lecture payments (RMB 100,000) from Beijing Normal University to the fund. His objective of educating scholars of the young generation in China is worthy of our appreciation. This should be further stressed by the fact that Prof. Halliday flew alone from Sydney to Beijing at the old age of 90, to launch the foundation ceremony and attend China’s 14th National Conference of Functional Linguistics. The organizer of the conference also held an evening party to celebrate his 90th birthday.

To conclude, I would like to emphasize the following points.

First, Prof. Halliday set up a good example to establish the close relation among Sydney University and Chinese universities in general, and between Peking University and Sydney University in particular.

Second, compared with trade, economy, and other disciplines, we should see the value of linguistics from a new angle, that is to say, language plays a very important role in promoting communication and cooperation among different countries.

Third, no one would argue that Halliday’s systemic-functional linguistics is the most influential linguistic theory in China. With increasing Chinese linguists trained in Australia, especially in Sydney University, and with increasing visiting scholars from Australia and Sydney University, the future is bright for linguistic scholarship.

Acknowledgements

Thanks to Professor Hu Zhuanglin’s kind consent, his keynote speech made at the Peking University-Sydney University Forum on 22 October 2018 can be collected into this book, as a special tribute to the late Professor M.A.K. Halliday (13 April 1925—15 April 2018) of the University of Sydney for his pioneering and internationally acclaimed contribution to bridging Chinese linguistics and English linguistics as a foundation of his own theory of systemic-functional linguistics, apart from advancing China-Australia relations by means of his academic leadership and impact in linguistics and his profound friendship with the multitude of Chinese scholars in the circles of linguistics. Professor Hu Zhuanglin’s great support for both the 15th biennial international conference of Australian Studies and the publication of the conference proceedings is gratefully acknowledged.

As an annual interdisciplinary and in-depth dialogue on China-Australia relations, Peking University-Sydney University Forum is intended to discuss how mutual understanding and in-depth communication of shared interests are more needed now than ever, to help guide our two countries towards a cooperative and sustainable shared future. The inaugural forum was co-hosted at Peking University on 22 October 2018, focusing on the theme “China-Australia Relations: Shaping a Shared Future”. The major topics of the keynote speeches included how to enhance bilateral relations from the perspectives of interdisciplinary observation and research under the challenges of a globalizing world and increasing interdependence, how to improve mutual understanding and address differences resulting from different social values and national identities through academic exchanges, educational cooperation and student exchange, and how to make scholar to scholar dialogue an on-going forum for guiding Australia-China relations towards a sustainable shared future through educational development and collaboration.

As a result of the bilateral relation in trade, economy, education as well as the establishment of the comprehensive strategic partnership, China and Australia have shared interests and goals in addressing global challenges in human development, sustaining mobility, resources, climate change, multiculturalism, well-being and security. The connectivity between these challenges brings together academic disciplines such as business/economics, science/technology, medicine, international relations, communication and education in their efforts for finding possible solutions.On the basis of the above observations, the annual forum will primarily discuss joint approaches to these challenges across relevant disciplines with a focus on the value and role of education in shaping a shared future of China and Australia.

The Editor

1 J.R. Martin, Interviews with M.A.K. Halliday—Language Talking Back on Himself, Bloombury, 2011.

2 Hernandez, 1998, in Martin, 2011, pp.147—160.

3 Rasheed, 2010, in Martin, 2011, p.208.

4 Hu, Zhuanglin, “The Chinese Origin of Halliday’s Academic Thoughts and Its Return”, Foreign Language Research, 2016 (5), pp.9—13. Also in Hu, Zhuanglin, The Chinese Origin of Halliday’s Academic Thoughts and Its Return, Foreign Language Teaching and Research Press, 2018.

5 Hu, Zhuanglin, “Halliday’s China Dream”, Foreign Languages in China, 2015, 12 (6), pp.15—19.