This book describes the discourse of biology from a systemic functional linguistic perspective. It offers a detailed description of resources based on text analysis. The description reveals co-textual patterns of language features, their expressions through grammatical resources, as well as their functions in the disciplinary context. The book also applies the description to analyse student texts in undergraduate biology, revealing characteristics of language and knowledge development. Although the discussion in this book focuses on the discourse of biology, both the language description and the descriptive principle can be used to inform the examination of knowledge in academic discourse in general, making this key reading for students and researchers in systemic functional linguistics, discourse analysis, English for academic purposes, applied linguistics, and science education.

Jing Hao is Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the Department of English at The Hong Kong Polytechnic University.

Part I: Motivation and Background 1. Knowledge Building 2. Construing Knowledge through Language Part II: Describing Ideational Discourse Semantics 3. Entity: The Naming of Things, People, Places and Activities 4. Dimensionality: Naming Attributes of Entities 5. Figure: What Is Going On? 6. Stratal Tension (Grammatical Metaphor) Part III: Applying Ideational Discourse Semantic Systems to Investigate Knowledge Building in Undergraduate Biology 7. Construing Taxonomy 8. Construing Activity Sequence 9. Building Disciplinary Field in Undergraduate Biology 10. Conclusion Appendix: Sample Texts and Analysis