'Researchers interested in fine-grained analyses of language will find valuable models here for linking language structures with the meanings they construe. Those unfamiliar with SFL can benefit from Christie's discussion of the values and goals of education as manifested in the language of teaching and learning. Her analysis of classroom discourse provides tools and frameworks for students and researchers to focus on the role that language plays in structuring learning opportunities.' Mary J. Schleppegrell, Linguistics Department, University of California, Davis. 'As a teacher and also as a professional involved in teacher education, I consider this book essential reading for both pre-service and in-service teachers.' Viviane M. Heberle, Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina, Brazil

This book offers a model of classroom discourse analysis that uses systemic functional linguistic theory and associated genre theory to develop a view of classroom episodes as 'curriculum genres', some of which operate in turn as part of larger unities of work called 'curriculum macrogenres'. Drawing on Bernstein's work, Christie argues that two registers operate in pedagogic discourse: a regulative register, to do with the goals and directions of the discourse; and an instructional register, to do with the particular 'content' or knowledge at issue. Each can be shown to be realized in distinctive clusters of choices in the grammar. The operation of the regulative register determines the initiation, pacing, sequencing and evaluation of the overall pedagogic activity.

The book sets out its methodology in detail by reference to a number of classroom texts, and a range of school subjects. Overall, schools emerge as sites of symbolic control in a culture.