The past 15 years have witnessed a renewed interest in the theoretical and epistemological issues which underpin the institutionalized study of literary texts. In particular, the poststructuralist analysis has challenged many of the institutional, ethical, and political practices in which this enterprise is conducted. In thius book Thibault re-focuses on the text to build a unifying discourse for understanding the processes by which human meaning is formulated. He aims to renew the semiotic project in ways which not only develop new theoretical and methodological resources for studying and social meaning, but also redefine the language in which these issues are being discussed. The author's approach is an extension of the linguistic and semiotic theories originally formulated by Michael Halliday and others in the London-Syndey school of systemic-functional linguistics. Halliday's theory is drawn on in order to develop a detailed form of textual analysis whixh is sensitive to the social contexts of specific human activities - social semiotics at work.
