"I don't recall what inspired so many of us most; was it Michael Halliday's Inaugural Address with its title 'Grammar, Society and the Noun', or the perhaps apocryphal remark that all linguistics is sociolinguistics; but what is crystal-clear in reading this final volume in his Collected Works edited with such care and devotion by Jonathan Webster for the benefit of all, is how modern it all reads with its interwoven links between texture and community, its implication of action in text - the can do, inherent in meaning potential but at the same time how definitive: the framework of analysis of an integrated general theory which now seems so much embedded in our modes of practice. Everyone will come away from this reading and re-reading of Michael Halliday’s writings on language and society with a different insight: for me it is two matters; every persons capacity for creativity in exploiting meaning potential, and the central importance of establishing a unifying system able not only to capture form but to relate it consequentially and functionally to our understandings of social life." Chris Candlin, Senior Research Professor, Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia

The tenth volume in Professor M.A.K. Halliday's collected works includes papers focusing on Language and Society. The papers provide a framework for understanding the social meaning of language, and the relation of language to other social phenomena. The volume begins with Professor Halliday's ground-breaking work on the users and uses of language. Subsequent chapters are organized around a discussion of sociolinguistic theory, and the relation between language and social class and social structure.