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The purpose of this paper is to discuss the usefulness of Halliday’s linguistic theory known as Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) in analysing qualitative data. In order to do this, it initially presents an overview of SFL, and then explains how and why four linguistic features namely, nominalisation, grammatical metaphor, thematic structure and lexical density are useful in examining qualitative data. The paper also discusses three social metafunctions of language known as the ideational, the interpersonal and the textual metafunctions which are significant for understanding and interpreting texts.

This paper employs SFL as the main theoretical framework to discussing the usefulness of this linguistics theory in qualitative data analysis.

SFL can be seen as a paradigm shift in linguistic theory moving away from the traditional focus on syntax to the inclusion of the interface between language and pragmatics. The focus of SFL is language in use. It deals with texts in social contexts, which is the main focus in qualitative data analysis. Thus, SFL provides both research tools and theoretical insights for understanding and interpreting texts.

This paper provides significant insights into language which are crucial for understanding and interpreting texts in social contexts.

The introduction of the New Engineering Contract (NEC) in the United Kingdom came at a time when the Royal Hong Kong Jockey Club were embarking on major contract works. This new contract provided the type of simple, flexible document ideal for our organization, which seeks to enter into co‐operative joint ventures with contractors. This, however, has not been an example followed by other Employers in Hong Kong and this paper gives the author's views on the reasons for this and the prospects of a change in the future. The paper then summarises presentations by members of the Jockey Club's professional consultants and one of the Contractors at the Hong Kong NEC Conference. The Club's projects are described in detail, however, the timing of the paper in advance of completion of the two major projects prevents a final assessment of the use of NEC in Hong Kong.

AT this time of the year librarians take their holidays. They will need the break this year as much as in any year since the end of the war. There are many problems to be faced in the autumn and winter, among them the continuous rising prices of everything, and the diversion of public funds to rearmament, which must have some repercussions upon the library service. Whether it is yet a fact that the pound is worth little more than five shillings in real money, we are not prepared to say, but it is certain that every cost has increased, and is continuing to increase. Especially is this so in connection with book production and bookselling; even, as our correspondent on another page suggests, in some cases the royalties of authors are in jeopardy. How far this will go it is impossible to say. At the same time the rates everywhere promise to increase still further, and in spite of the advances, it is unlikely that libraries will be exempt from the stringencies of the time. Such predictions have, however, been frequently contradicted by our past experience. Some of the real advances libraries have made have seemed to be the direct result of bad times. This is hardly a holiday meditation, but we think our readers will need all the physical and mental refreshment they can get before they face the possibilities that may follow.

The purpose of this paper is to propose a social semiotic approach to analysing objects of learning in terms of their critical aspects.

The design for this paper focuses on how the semiotic resources – including language, equations, and diagrams – that are commonly used in physics teaching realise the critical aspects of a common physics object of learning. A social semiotic approach to the analysis of a canonical text extract from optics is presented to illustrate how critical aspects can be identified.

Implications for university teaching and learning of physics stemming from this social semiotic approach are suggested.

Hitherto under-explored similarities between the Variation Theory of Learning, which underpins learning studies, and a social semiotic approach to meaning-making are identified. These similarities are used to propose a new, potentially very powerful approach to identifying critical aspects of objects of learning.

This paper aims to analyze how middle schoolers developed a critical awareness of language while participating in a curricular unit informed by systemic functional linguistics (SFL). This unit was developed to understanding and taking action to protect a local bat population in the context of school reforms shaping teaching and learning in the USA. It was designed to support a heterogeneous class of seventh graders in learning to read scientific explanations, write letters to government officials and develop a functional metalanguage to support them in analyzing how language simultaneously constructs ideas, enacts power dynamics and manages the flow of information in disciplinary texts. The questions guiding this study are: How do students use SFL metalanguage in text production and interpretation practices? Do their uses of SFL metalanguage support critical language awareness and reflection? And, if so, in what ways?

This study uses ethnographic methods to conduct teacher action research. Data include classroom transcripts, student writing samples and interviews.

The findings illustrate how students engaged with SFL, often playfully, to create their own student-generated functional metalanguage in highly productive ways.

This study contributes to a growing body of scholarship that suggests SFL metalanguage can provide teachers and students with a powerful semiotic toolkit that enables them to navigate the demands of teaching and learning in the context of the Standardization and Accountability movement.

This study has implications teachers’ professional development and students’ disciplinary literacy development in the context of school reform.

To date, few studies have explored how students take up and transform SFL metalanguage into a tool for critical reflection, especially adolescents.

Law requires translations in order to make the mundane world legible to the legal sphere. This translation requires transposing an infinite landscape of ethical possibilities into a set number of categories, modes of speech, reasoning, and histories. The body represents both a challenge to this translation while illuminating the historical contingency of the contaminants that ineluctably shape law’s responsiveness. This chapter is concerned with the way the figure of the body in law acts as a kind of absent presence through the writ of habeas corpus, what Roberto Esposito (2015) calls ‘the silent mechanism that facilitates the passage from one mechanism to another through the chain of symbols engendered by its very presence’. The author would like to trace this chain of symbols which permits the passage from differing legal mechanisms through the history of the writ of habeas corpus to examine how it served as one vehicle through which law established predominance in Colonial British Columbia. Through British Columbia colonial legal history, this chapter will examine how Habeas corpus was used to more than merely seize jurisdiction but, more pointedly, to mobilise images of sovereignty to bolster local, contingent, and contextual forms of authority and sovereignty. In the end, the author’s argument will contribute to an understanding of the various mechanisms and discourses that sought to envelope the differing peoples, landscapes, and topographies of British Columbia into a single normative and affective legal atmosphere, as lawmakers sought to distinguish themselves from their southern neighbour’s colonial experience.