This title details the key terms, thinkers and texts in systemic functional linguistics. The field of Systemic Functional Linguistics is a social semiotic approach to language pioneered by M. A. K. Halliday, which has assumed a central importance in linguistics in recent years, anchored by a growing body of work. This book details the key terms, the key thinkers and the key texts in this field in an approachable, easy to understand and accessible manner. It is authored by leading names in the field and is aimed at undergraduates and postgraduates studying linguistics and language studies. "The Key Terms" series offers undergraduate students clear, concise and accessible introductions to core topics. Each book includes a comprehensive overview of the key terms, concepts, thinkers and texts in the area covered and ends with a guide to further resources.

The Collected Works of Christian M.I.M. Matthiessen covers more than 35 years of work by one of the world's leading scholars in the systemic functional linguistics (SFL) school. It examines the nature, functions and structure of human language from a number of points of view within the framework of contemporary scientific thought. The series is organized into a number of distinct topics that reinforce each other, and together constitute a coherent, cutting-edge body of theoretical and descriptive work. VOLUME 1 provides the foundation for the whole series of collected works, and includes chapters that serve as introduction of and summaries of Systemic Functional Linguistics. It is concerned with the nature of systemic functional linguistics as theory, as framework and as a school of linguistics. It includes an overview of the organization or the architecture of language according to SFL and of the lexicogrammatical subsystem of language, and of Halliday's conception of language as a resource for making meaning. It is also concerned with the history and development of SFL. A new chapter written for this volume addresses the theme underpinning all chapters in the volume: the challenge of theorizing language. It introduces the metaphor of cartography, used by Matthiessen in his work on language, as a way of mapping linguistic theory, showing how all areas relate to one another.

The field of Systemic Functional Linguistics is a social semiotic approach to language pioneered by M. A. K. Halliday, which has assumed a central importance in linguistics in recent years, anchored by a growing body of work. This book details the key terms, the key thinkers and the key texts in this field in an approachable, easy to understand and accessible manner. It is authored by leading names in the field and is aimed at undergraduates and postgraduates studying linguistics and language studies.

This is a study edition of this important work by M A K Halliday. The subject of this book is how human beings construe their experience of the world. The construction of experience is usually thought of as knowledge, represented in the form of conceptual taxonomies, schemata, scripts and the like. The authors offer an interpretation that is complementary to this, treating experience not as knowing but as meaning; and hence as something that is construed in language. In other words, the concern is with the construal of human experience as a semantic system; and since language plays the central role not only in storing and exchanging experience but also in construing it, language is taken as the interpretative base. The focus of the book is both theoretical and descriptive. The authors consider it important that theory and description should develop in parallel, with constant interchange between the two. The major descriptive component is an account of the most general features of the ideational semantics of English, which is then exemplified in two familiar text types (recipes and weather forecasts). There is also a brief reference to the semantics of Chinese. Theoretical issues are raised throughout as they become relevant to the discussion, with the theoretical base being drawn from systemic functional linguistics. Both the theoretical and descriptive proposals offered in the book are compared and contrasted with approaches deriving from Al, cognitive science and cognitive linguistics.

Continuing Discourse on Language offers the reader a selective account of the evolution of important aspects of Halliday's Systemic Functional Linguistics over the last couple of decades. The range of topics covered includes not only certain fundamental concepts at the level of theory but also an account of the wide range of applications enabled by the descriptive framework that the theory has generated. Given its acclaimed perspective on language as social semiotic, SFL has always located semiotic activity in relation to human life: in the chapters of this book internationally recognised authors attempt to show the ways in which SFL relates to recent research on cognition, on socio-cultural contexts, and in computational linguistics. A theory is only as good as the description and application it enables: conceptualising the relations of theory and practice as a dialectic, SFL has created a framework for the analysis of language from the level of cultural context to that of the media for semiotic expressions. Continuing Discourse on Language gives the reader an insight into the continuing evolution of the impressive range of frames of description and their applications: from typology to multi-modality, from models of discourse analysis to translation and stylistics, from the role of language in knowledge construal to language education, genre based pedagogy and web based learning, the volume provides a rich resource for students and researchers in language study for understanding, practicing and applying a linguistics keenly aware of the role of language in social life.