ABSTRACT
This chapter shows that the standard Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) model of the language-culture relation. It outlines more detail below lags behind existing theoretical work in the discipline so that, through following the trajectory of existing ideas, a modified and compatible model can be developed. The accepted corollary of this perspective is that an entire social system, or culture, is the set of relations between the different social groups that comprise it, while, in SFL terms, the language system is a similarly interconnected set of meanings. The chapter attempts to reinflect core elements of SFL theory in light of related theoretical developments in interactional sociolinguistics, namely the concepts of superdiversity and scales, and the neo-Marxist discourse theory of Laclau and Mouffe. It outlines the model of language and society as developed in SFL, chiefly by Halliday in the 1960s and 1970s, but with important later additions by Ruqaiya Hasan.
