This is the first grammar of French to provide an overall account of the language from a systemic functional perspective. Alice Caffarel uses this approach to linguistics, pioneered by Michael Halliday, to provide a description of French grammar in terms of its meaning potential and realizations in structure. This grammar has been developed as a resource for discourse analysis (including the analysis of literary texts) and for understanding how French grammar makes meaning in different textual and contextual environments.

One of the key aspects of this description is that it provides various perspectives from which to explore grammar as a meaning-making potential, from the system end and the text end of the cline of instantiation. This multi-perspectival approach brings out both the resources specific to particular registers and the resources general to the language. In addition, it provides multiple pathways for exploring how meaning (both first-order and second-order) is both construed and constructed by lexicogrammatical patterns in texts. This systemic functional approach to French therefore reveals a unique new perspective on one of the world's most widely used international languages.

The book gives a comprehensive account of French grammar which is suitable for use by undergraduates, postgraduates and academics who wish to analyse texts of various registers, and researchers in systemic functional and French linguistics.