Blurb:

In this chapter I attempt to provide a brief account of SFL’s continuing struggle to understand how and why language works. Since the work of language is always and only done in society, the struggle to understand why and how language works is also the struggle to understand the nature of the relationship between language and society – hence the importance of asking where, why and how people use language and what follows upon this fact. My account of how Halliday proceeded from this initial observation will not be organised chronologically: instead, it will be concept based for two reasons.