INTRODUCTION

Functional approaches to language seek to reveal more than structural grammar, they try to tell us something about meaning. One kind of meaning that can be revealed is how speakers represent their experience. This meaning is the focus of this chapter.

The previous three chapters have laid the foundation for our exploration into the functions of English grammar. The first chapter provided a useful overview of the relation between function and structure and introduced the functional–structural view of language. It also provided a brief overview of Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL). In Chapter 2 more detail was given about the distinction between structure and function and the way in which this will be handled in this book. In doing so Chapter 2 presented a general view of the clause, and this chapter will pick up from this point and provide the first detailed view of the clause. Chapter 3 focused exclusively on a particular part of the grammar: the grammar of things and the structure of the nominal group. In this chapter the focus returns to the clause.