Halliday has developed not only a multi-functional approach to language but also a multi-dimensional one.
The fortieth annual meeting of the International Systemic Functional Congress, held at Sun Yat-sen Uninersity in Guangzhou, China in July 2013 (henceforward, 'ISFC40'), provided a context in which it seemed appropriate to look back on the beginnings of this functional approach to language.
However, outside Québec this common core is strictly universalist and limited to the exigencies of liberal democracy itself (including a more functional approach to language as medium of communication rather than badge of identity).
This functional-typological tradition, in its loose sense, includes typological research from different functional approaches to language, such as cognitive grammar (including construction grammar), Functional Discourse Grammar (FDG) and Role and Reference Grammar (RRG).
But novel research drawing on pragmatics, discourse analysis, and other functional approaches to language acquisition has questioned the validity of this tenet.
The functional approach to disciplinary literacy parallels historians' reading practices while supporting language development.
"This is an attempt to find a functional approach to this that both sides can agree with," he said.
Halliday's (1978 , 1994 social semiotic approach to language, Systemic Functional Linguistics (hereafter SFL), suits the context of the present study: it views knowledge as the product of ongoing situated social literacy practices, contested around the meaning making processes.
The need for such a meaning-oriented approach to language, particularly in multilingual research, has also been articulated by experienced functional typologists since the 1960's (cf. Jakobson 1966; Croft 1990; Haspelmath 2010a, b).
We use the term 'functional language typology' as an umbrella term for all functional approaches to typology.
In many parts, the paper also discusses other functional approaches to typology and shows how these interact with and contribute to the growing body of studies in systemic functional language typology (hereafter, 'systemic typology').
