J. R. Martin is a leading scholar who has greatly developed the theoretical framework of systemic functional linguistics (SFL) over the past four decades. Some of these contributions, such as the systems of discourse semantics, the appraisal framework and genre relations have been widely applied in various areas of linguistic studies and language education. The educational linguistic model he and his colleagues have cultivated and developed has attracted the attention of more and more educators from different disciplines around the globe. In this interview, he firstly elaborates on the significance of the concepts of discourse semantics, grammatical metaphor and genre. Then he continues with applications of genre theory in secondary school education, language maintenance, the relation and collaboration between Legitimation Code Theory (LCT) and SFL, and how the two paradigms complement each other. Finally, he introduces some of his recent collaborations with grammarians of different languages.

As appliable linguistics, systemic functional linguistics (SFL) has been widely applied in various areas of education – in studies of classroom discourse, in teacher training, curriculum development, etc. Zhihui Fang is a leading scholar who has applied systemic functional linguistics in the development of pedagogical models for secondary literacy education. In this interview, Yanmei Gao, Chengzhu Yin and Hanbing Li ask Zhihui Fang about the applicability of systemic functional linguistics in literacy education, especially in the United States. They also discuss the possible influence of the new developments of the Sydney School, such as genre relations, on content areas teaching practice.

Story Theme has been one of the major concepts in both literary criticism study and stylistic study. The essential characteristics of story theme might be summarized as being subjective and inter-subjective, social and generalized, pervasive throughout the whole text but covered, conventional and recoverable, and multi-faceted. This paper mainly discusses two stylistic approaches to story theme study. Literary stylistic approach focuses on the covert side and multi-levelness of story theme; while functional stylistics attaches much importance to the mechanisms that function to realize story theme.

This paper explores how the interpersonal meaning of power is realized by the lexico-grammatical patterns, taking one episode from the novel The Thorn Birds as examples. The analytical framework is drawn from systemic functional grammar. The findings suggest that as a type of interpersonal meaning, power could be realized by non-reciprocal language patterns. The finding is meant to deepen our understanding of the relation between the meaning of text and the lexico-grammatical patterns that function to realize that meaning.