Linguistic Studies of Text and Discourse

For nearly half a century, Professor M. A. K. Halliday has been enriching the discipline of linguistics with his keen insights into the social semiotic phenomenon we call language. This ten-volume series presents the seminal works of Professor Halliday. The papers in this second volume focus on the application of systemic functional grammar to the analysis of texts, both literary and everyday, written and spoken. Through detailed linguistic analyses of specific texts, ranging from the highly valued by such authors as William Golding, J. B. Priestley, Alfred Lord Tennyson and Charles Darwin, to the more everyday, such as a fund-raising letter and part of a doctoral defence, Halliday explores the power of grammar to create meaning, to change our lives for better or worse. Each text is studied, as one would study any kind of language, in terms of the linguistic resources that contribute to the realization of its 'meaning potential'. The analyses are not only interesting for what they reveal about the texts under investigation, but also instructive about the practice and methods of systemic grammar analysis.