ABSTRACT
To fully understand a particular theory about language and communication it is useful to examine the roots of the theory before going on to discuss the main conceptual base of the theory itself. Also consistent in introducing a theory is contrasting it with other prominent approach(es) to language that surface at the same or similar time frames. Such a perspective offers core contextual information. For that reason I begin by briefly discussing the roots of Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) in the Prague School of Linguistics and in the work of J. R. Firth, followed by a short explanation of how SFL differs from the Chomskian tradition of the early 1980s just after Halliday’s central book, Language as Social Semiotic: The Social Interpretation of Language and Meaning, appeared (1978).
