Academic discourse is the gateway not only to educational success but to
worlds of imagination, discovery and accumulated wisdom. Understanding
the nature of academic discourse and developing ways of helping everyone
access, shape and change this knowledge is critical to supporting social
justice. Yet education research often ignores the forms taken by
knowledge and the language through which they are expressed. This volume
comprises cutting-edge work that is bringing together sociological and
linguistic approaches to access academic discourse.
Systemic functional linguistics (SFL) is a long-established and widely
known approach to understanding language. Legitimation Code Theory (LCT)
is a younger and rapidly growing approach to exploring and shaping
knowledge practices. Now evermore research and practice are using these
approaches together. This volume presents new advances from this
inter-disciplinary dialogue, focusing on state-of-the-art work in SFL
provoked by its productive dialogue with LCT. It showcases work by the
leading lights of both approaches, including the foremost scholar of SFL
and the creator of LCT. Chapters introduce key ideas from LCT, new
conceptual developments in SFL, studies using both approaches, and
guidelines for shaping curriculum and pedagogy to support access to
academic discourse in classrooms.
The book is essential reading for all appliable and educational
linguists, as well as scholars and practitioners of education and
sociology.
