ABSTRACT
This volume has been designed to showcase the cutting-edge of the ever-growing dialogue between systemic functional linguistics (SFL) and Legitimation Code Theory (LCT) and the insights into academic discourse this brings. This opening chapter reviews the foundations of this dialogue and positions the work presented throughout the book within this context. First it steps through the development of SFL work in education, focusing on the register-variable field and how it has been impinged upon by successive developments in Bernstein’s code theory and subsequently LCT. It then introduces how LCT extends and integrates Bernstein’s work to embrace a greater range of phenomena within a more systematic framework. It does this by introducing the dimensions of Specialization and Semantics, and showing the insights these conceptual tools can bring to academic knowledge and academic discourse. Finally, it introduces the chapters that make up the volume and positions them in relation to the ways the LCT–SFL dialogue has driven their understandings. This opening chapter lays the foundations for what is to follow and gives a flavour of energy and explanatory power this dialogue generates.
