The introduction to systemic functional linguistics explores the social semiotic approach to language most closely associated with the work of Michael Halliday and his colleagues. An approach that views language as a strategic, meaning-making resource, systemic linguistics focuses on the analysis of authentic, everyday texts and asks both how people use language to make meanings and how language itself is organized to enable those meanings to be made. The book offers both an overview of systemic theory and illustrations of how systemic techniques can be applied in analysis of everyday texts. It begins with a technical exploration of language in the context of culture, looking at techniques of generic description. Chapter 3 deals with register and the dimensions of the register variables. Chapter 4 explores the nature of text, introducing the notion of cohesion and techniques for the discourse-semantic analyses of reference, conjunction, and lexical relations. Chapters 5-9 develop description of the lexico-grammar, covering the three grammatical systems of mood, transitivity, and theme. Chapter 10 looks at how to go about text analysis. (Contains 145 references.) (MSE)