The Functional Analysis of English: A Hallidayan Approach (Arnold Publication)

I'm very satisfied with this seller. I highly recommend them.

Josi Henriques

I bought this for the section on transitivity analysis, and was not disappointed - it was clear, straightforward and very useful. An invaluable addition to the bookshelf of anyone who's interested in how the language works.

The Functional Analysis of English is an excellent introduction to Halliday's Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL). Its purpose is to provide a simplified introduction to SFL and the authors are successful in doing so. No background knowledge of linguistics is necessary and even those who have some will find the book informative. Chapters one to ten contain exercises and they are followed by sample answer, making it a good independent study book. However, it would also make a good classroom text as it is easy to follow yet it leaves room for discussion and further study. Almost every chapter contains a section for further study and this is valuable since it often identifies areas that are not clear in SFL or that pose difficulties for one reason or another. The last two chapters of the book make it complete as an introductory resource for systemic analysis: Applications of Functional Analysis and Historical perspectives. The section on applications give a nice overview of the varied applications of SFL and the historical presentation is especially valuable, for those beginning to study linguistic analysis as well as those who are new to the Hallidayan model, as it situates SFL historically and currently in terms of linguistic models. It is a book that is pleasant to read, with a very nice lay-out. I would recommend this book to anyone who is interested in the English language for any purpose.

This book is comprised of 12 chapters: Preliminaries; Labels; Subject and related functions; Information Structure and Thematic Structure; Grammar and text; Process and Participant; Structure of the Nominal Group; Rankshifted clauses; Clause complexes: expansion; Clause complexes: projection; Applications of Functional Analysis; and Historical perspectives.