Realizations: non-causal but real relationships in and between Halliday, Hasan, and Vygotsky

ABSTRACT

This paper looks at a concept central to Michael Halliday’s linguistics: realization. Ruqaiya Hasan always defined this concept in a Vygotskyan way, as semiotic mediation. In so doing, she made three important addenda to it and questioned the fit between systemic-functional concepts of language and Vygotsky’s. I will suggest that recently translated pedological texts offer a reply – a kind of pre-ply, if you will – to some of the queries she had. I will then propose a “try-brid” pedology in which Vygotsky’s neoformations are realized as Halliday’s conversational stages and development is realized as Hasan’s contextual cline of instantiation. I hope, by the conclusion, to have shown you, with two anti-smoking cartoons by Korean primary school students, how the concept of realization becomes real.

Acknowledgments

Many thanks to Ms. Choe Yeongmi for the use of her data, to Geoff Williams for the use of his presentation, and to Alfredo Jornet Gil and Mike Cole for vision and delicacy in reframing this paper. I claim exclusive authorship of any outstanding obfuscation and/or outright error.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Correction Statement

This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.