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Article published In:
Language, Context and Text
Vol. 3:2 (2021) ► pp.367–387

Martin on discourse semantics, genre, educational linguistics

ORCID logo | University of Sydney , Australia
ORCID logo | Peking University
| Beijing University of Information Science and Technology
| University of International Business and Economics
| China National Aviation Fuel Ltd. Northeastern Company

J. R. Martin is a leading scholar who has greatly developed the theoretical framework of systemic functional linguistics (SFL) over the past four decades. Some of these contributions, such as the systems of discourse semantics, the appraisal framework and genre relations have been widely applied in various areas of linguistic studies and language education. The educational linguistic model he and his colleagues have cultivated and developed has attracted the attention of more and more educators from different disciplines around the globe. In this interview, he firstly elaborates on the significance of the concepts of discourse semantics, grammatical metaphor and genre. Then he continues with applications of genre theory in secondary school education, language maintenance, the relation and collaboration between Legitimation Code Theory (LCT) and SFL, and how the two paradigms complement each other. Finally, he introduces some of his recent collaborations with grammarians of different languages.

Keywords: SFL, discourse semantics, grammatical metaphor, genre, educational linguistics, SLATE, intermodality, LCT, interdisciplinarity, individuation
Article outline
  • 1.From semantics to discourse semantics
  • 2.Grammatical metaphor
  • 3.From discourse semantics to genre relations
  • 4.Genres in secondary school education
  • 5.Moving to higher education: The SLATE project
  • 6.Genre theory and language maintenance
  • 7.Cooperation and coordination between SFL and legitimation code theory
  • 8.Future directions of SFL
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 15 October 2021
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/langct.20003.mar
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