ABSTRACT
In Chapter 3, when we considered the interpersonal elements of the grammar of English, dealing with matters such as Power and Contact, we were already supplying one perspective on the relationships between the reader and the writer. In this Chapter, we are more specifically concerned with subject positions, the relative positions created for reader and writer through texts; here texts are seen as the means by which a writer performs an action on the reader. But before we embark on the details of how subjects are created by texts, we ought to glance at a theory of subjecthood which relates it to the underlying ideological concerns of this book.
