Blurb:

In the previous chapter, I was concerned with the deployment of systems and system networks as navigational tools in the study of language in general terms, including different regions along the cline of instantiation. Here I will continue on this theme, but move to interfaces between linguistics and applications that are sometimes seen as on the borders between linguistics and other disciplines. Systemic Functional Linguistics has been developed as a resource capable of supporting a wide range of applications; Halliday characterized this kind of linguistics as appliable linguistics. In this chapter, I am concerned with the notion of system in SFL in different domains of applications – centrally applications where system networks are used as representation of choice. As a kind of appliable linguistics, SFL has been deployed in a wide range of contexts, but I will only focus on examples of those where the system plays a central role. Thus in this chapter, I will only illustrate the appliability of ‘system’; and I will not focus on other aspects of SFL that have turned out to be of crucial importance in various areas of application.