ABSTRACT
In Chapter 2 we considered stretches of text which construed the same subfield. RUs provide an alternative way of sectioning text into consistent stretches; if we then add to these stretches of text construing a consistent tenor we will have three different ways of dividing up the text, one for each metafunction.2 These different divisions may or may not overlap, and it is the combination of overlap and disalignment that allows a speaker to develop a text through a mixture of continuity and change – exactly the features that make it a text, as you’re probably sick of hearing by now. Following Gregory we can call stretches of text that show a continuity across all three metafunctions a phase, so that when there is a significant change in any of the three metafunctions we have a new phase.
