Sometimes it takes either a child or a Galileo to point out the obvious. It is true that to see the ordinary with a fixed unswerving gaze is to see the very inside of things; and then to point it out to mankind, to which they say, ‘Yes of course: that it is the way it must be!’ – is the summary of human achievement.
In the field of language Halliday and Hasan may be credited to have done exactly such a thing. (We are so used to applauding the scientists and technologists for exploring nature’s phenomena that we don’t quite see the greatness of those who make discoveries about the world constructed by human beings.) They pointed out what cohesion was … and showed it as a major defining characteristic of all language, both spoken and written.
In their book Cohesion in English (1976, Longman) they have systematically shown what keeps a text together: how words are used to signal the points at which an author pauses, digresses, adds, qualifies or does say number of things which fluent readers grasp unconsciously but which others have to be taught so that they too can acquire speed. Theirs is not a speed reading course: they are the founders of a whole school of linguistics titled Systemic Linguistics, which has its own scholarly journals and books, notably from Australia.
Literacy has been defined by Ruqayya Hasan and other scholars including her husband M.A. Halliday, as being on three levels: First is recognition literacy. For example, when you are driving you see a sign ‘P’ with a line marked across it. It creates obedience. These signs need not be in the ‘sign’-form as such. If you read a sign which says ‘STOP’, you don’t need to understand the English language to know that this ‘stop’ means. It is more basic than language. You look at the shape of the word and immediately you get the message. The next level of literacy is ‘making signs’ which means that you are able to draw your own ‘NO SMOKING’ sign and put it up in your drawing room so that nobody smokes. You have not invented the sign but you know when to use it. This is the maximum level where our education system brings us.
The highest level of literacy is the ability to manipulate language: to be able to create a new, original sign – not of course something revelatory, but one that is original to you. This is writing, not copying. It is what no one else could have written exactly like that.
Halliday and Hasan retired some time back from the University of Sydney, Australia. They continue their research in language.