Text and texture

We all recognize a text as having some sort of unity, but in what exactly does that unity consist? The 27 contributions collected in this volume derive from the 13th Euro-International Systemic Functional Workshop held at the Université de Bretagne Occidentale, at Brest in France, and they attempt in different ways to answer at least part of this complex question. In order to do so, they use analytical techniques inspired by Systemic Functional Linguistics. In this theoretical framework, one of the strands of meaning is the textual metafunction, which Michael Halliday has called the "enabling" metafunction in that it is the strand of meaning which makes a series of clauses into a text. It includes thematic structure, information structure and cohesion, and all three are considered here. Some of the contributions consider them in relation to specific genres, such as e-mails, medical discharge notices or scientific abstracts; some do so in relation to literary texts. Many concern English, but Portuguese, French and Danish are also considered. Recent research on text has gone beyond the verbal to consider the contribution played by visual or other non-verbal aspects of communication. This is the case of several of these contributions. This volume thus constitutes a significant contribution to current studies on the nature of text.