WORKING WITH DISCOURSE: MEANING BEYOND THE CLAUSE. J. R. Martin
and David Rose (Eds.). New York: Continuum, 2003. Pp. 293. $125.00
cloth, $29.95 paper.
As someone with only a scant background in systemic functional
linguistics (SFL), acquired in passing through my work with teachers of
English to speakers of other languages, I was curious to see how far
this volume achieved its stated aims of describing a relatively
accessible set of tools for discourse analysis informed by SFL and
enabling discourse analysts to use them. My previous encounters with
SFL suggested that these aims were worthy but ambitious. Indeed,
although the back cover reassures us that the reader needs “no
prior experience of functional linguistics,” the book is in fact
written more like a handbook for readers already drawn to and familiar
with the paradigm rather than as an introduction for those who are
curious but uninitiated. This impression comes chiefly from the
monologic stance that the authors acknowledge they have taken. That is,
to make a particular “set of tools more available than they have
been in the past” they have concentrated on “a tool-kit
informed from just one point of view” (p. 273). The result is a
resource that will be enormously useful for those who already know that
they want to use these tools but less convincing for neophytes who need
first to be persuaded of their usefulness.