This book describes the discourse of biology from a systemic functional linguistic perspective. It offers a detailed description of resources based on text analysis. The description reveals co-textual patterns of language features, their expressions through grammatical resources, as well as their functions in the disciplinary context. The book also applies the description to analyse student texts in undergraduate biology, revealing characteristics of language and knowledge development. Although the discussion in this book focuses on the discourse of biology, both the language description and the descriptive principle can be used to inform the examination of knowledge in academic discourse in general, making this key reading for students and researchers in systemic functional linguistics, discourse analysis, English for academic purposes, applied linguistics, and science education.

Scientific literacy is approached on the premise that language is key to understand the nature of both learning and participation, in scientists’ practices as well as in liberal education for citizenship. Some of the questions that are addressed in the book are: • What does it take to be able to participate in different arenas in society involving science? • How does everyday language relate to scientific language? • How can students’ texts be analyzed to gain insights into their learning? • How can images be analyzed alongside verbal language? This book offers a thorough introduction to key ideas in M. A. K. Halliday’s systemic functional grammar through examples and practical analysis. Detailed analysis is offered of science textbooks and curriculum documents, classroom talk, experimental work, and students’ discussions of complex environmental issues. Further, an analytical model guiding the design and analysis of science learning discourses is introduced. The book starts with introducing excerpts from whole-class discussions, group work, experimental reports and textbooks as text-in-context. From this starting point, key aspects of language are carefully explained. The role of grammatical metaphor in the development of science knowledge is an important topic throughout the book. Tools for analyzing multimodal representations, intertextuality and multiple voices are also among the topics covered for understanding and analyzing school science discourses.

Taking a Systemic Functional Linguistic approach, this book explores the language that builds knowledge and values about history.

Taking a Systemic Functional Linguistic perspective, this book explores how language builds our knowledge about the past and gives value to historical events, thereby shaping contemporary culture. It brings together cutting-edge research from an international team of scholars to provide a detailed study of texts from three different world languages (English, Spanish, and Mandarin Chinese) – revealing how the discourse of history is constructed in these languages. Each chapter provides examples and step-by-step analyses of how knowledge and value are constructed in history texts, drawing on Systemic Functional Linguistics to develop theory and description in relation to text analysis. It also makes connections with disciplinary literacy and history education, showing how linguistic findings can benefit the teaching and learning of historical literacy. Providing theoretical and analytical foundations for studies of the discourse of history, it is essential reading for anyone interested in literacy, discourse analysis, and language description.

This user-friendly student guide is the essential resource for all those engaged in studying systemic functional linguistics (SFL). Assuming no prior knowledge, this guide is divided into nine chapters which can be read independently of one another and used for purposes of reference. The reading section maps out and mediates the key SFL literature. The application guides show how SFL has been and can be applied to various domains, from translation to healthcare communication. The term guides demystify the core terminology and the vocabulary guides aid readers in dealing with the most commonly used terms in text analysis. Systemic Functional Linguistics is an invaluable guidebook for all those studying functional grammar and SFL within linguistics, applied linguistics and related courses.

This book establishes a new theoretical and practical framework for multimodal disciplinary literacy (MDL) fused with the subject-specific science pedagogies of senior high school biology, chemistry and physics. It builds a compatible alignment of multiple representation and representation construction approaches to science pedagogy with the social semiotic, systemic functional linguistic-based approaches to explicit teaching of disciplinary literacy. The early part of the book explicates the transdisciplinary negotiated theoretical underpinning of the MDL framework, followed by the research-informed repertoire of learning experiences that are then articulated into a comprehensive framework of options for the planning of classroom work. Practical adoption and adaptation of the framework in biology, chemistry and physics classrooms are detailed in separate chapters. The latter chapters indicate the impact of the collaborative research on teachers' professional learning and students’ multimodal disciplinary literacy engagement, concluding with proposals for accommodating emerging developments in MDL in an ever-changing digital communication world. The MDL framework is designed to enable teachers to develop all students' disciplinary literacy competencies. This book will be of interest to researchers, teacher educators and postgraduate students in the field of science education. It will also have appeal to those in literacy education and social semiotics. The Open Access version of this book, available at www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license.

This volume showcases previously unpublished research on theoretical, descriptive, and methodological innovations for understanding language patterns grounded in a Systemic Functional Linguistic perspective. Featuring contributions from an international range of scholars, the book demonstrates how advances in SFL have developed to reflect the breadth of variation in language and how descriptive methodologies for language have evolved in turn. Taken together, the volume offers a comprehensive account of Systemic Functional Language description, providing a foundation for practice and further research for students and scholars in descriptive linguistics, SFL, and theoretical linguistics.