Publisher's Synopsis
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 "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. The new chapter written for Volume 1 addresses the theme underpinning all the chapters in the volume: the challenge of theorizing language, and 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.
