Thematic Issue 39/3: Systemic Functional Linguistics ― Theory, Description, Analysis, and Appliability in a Global Perspective

2026-01-31

Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) is a distinctive tradition in the linguistic landscape, centrally characterized by its conception of language not as a set of rules, but as a meaning potential — a resource for making meaning within social and cultural contexts. Since its inception, contributors to SFL have positioned it as appliable linguistics, a framework designed to transcend the divide between theoretical and applied linguistics by addressing both research problems and practical issues faced by modern society; in this way, research in SFL is typically translational research.

While SFL has flourished globally, becoming a collective undertaking across all continents, it continues to face challenges regarding its visibility and accessibility within the broader academic community — in part, arguably, because it is inherently transdisciplinary in academic orientation: since the start in the 1960s, it has developed in dialogue with other fields of expertise, always remaining “permeable”. This special issue of Linha D’Água seeks to showcase the theory's worldwide vitality while fostering a productive dialogue with “fellow travelers” from neighboring disciplines and theories.

We invite contributions that represent frontier research and application in SFL while at the same time presented as accessible and engaging to researchers working in other functional, cognitive, or critical frameworks, including other “usage-based” approaches. Our goal is to move beyond a narrow circle of specialists and demonstrate how SFL can make a positive difference both in (1) illuminating analytical and descriptive issues in linguistics and (2) solving real-world problems.

We encourage submissions that explore the full spectrum of systemic functional activities, including the complementarity of theory and description, the exhange between theory-&-description and application, and the interdependent nature of description and analysis through the following themes:

  • Analytical Methods and Descriptive Modeling: SFL approaches to linguistic/semiotic description and to text and discourse analysis, including corpus-based, multimodal, or qualitative methods that contribute to descriptive endeavors.
  • Descriptions as Analytical Tools: Critical applications of existing systemic descriptions to reveal how meaning is construed in diverse contexts.
  • Cross-Linguistic and Multilingual Studies: Research that uses the analysis-description interplay to refine or compare linguistic descriptions across different languages, moving beyond “Anglo-centric” models to reflect the diversity of the “Global South”.
  • Theoretical Innovation: Explorations of how the dialectic between theory, description and analysis informs ongoing developments in SFL.
  • Interfaces with “Fellow Travelers”: Dialogue between SFL and other frameworks, including (but not limited to) other usage-based approaches to language, other functional theories, Cognitive Linguistics, Critical Discourse Analysis, Pragmatics, or Legitimation Code Theory.
  • Social Appliability and Practice: The application of SFL theory and descriptions to professional domains, including education, healthcare communication, clinical applications, translation studies, and Natural Language Processing.
  • Reflexive and Methodological Perspectives: Discussions on the challenges of representativeness, delicacy, and the role of linguistic databases, digital archives and open-access tools in ensuring the future of Systemic Functional Linguistics.

 

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Linha D’Água accepts manuscripts in Portuguese, English, French, or Spanish. Submissions must comply with the author guidelines, available at: https://www.revistas.usp.br/linhadagua/about/submissions

 

The journal is indexed in: Web of Science - Clarivate (ESCI), MLA, MIAR, Latindex, Linguistic Bibliography, DOAJ, among others.

 

 

Submission deadline: June 30th, 2026.

Expected publication: December 2026.

 

 

Guest Editors:

Christian M. I. M. Matthiessen
cmatthie@mac.com
Complutense University of Madrid (UCM, Spain)

Paulo Roberto Gonçalves-Segundo
paulosegundo@usp.br
University of São Paulo (USP, Brasil)

Theodoro C. Farhat
farhat@usp.br
University of São Paulo (USP, Brasil)
Complutense University of Madrid (UCM, Spain)