A discourse analysis that is not based on grammar is likely to end up as a running commentary on a text, whereas a grammar-based one tends to treat text as a finished product rather than an on-going process.

This book offers an approach to discourse analysis that is both grammar-based and oriented towards text as process. It proposes a model called TEXT TYPE within the framework of Hallidayan systemic-functional linguistics, which views grammatical choices in a text not as elements that combine to form a clause structure, but as semantic features that link successive clauses into an...