This volume summarizes the results of a congress held in Greifswald, Germany, on 6-8 December 2007, on the subject of approaches to describing types of texts. System theory describes social systems based on a uniform method of thought that seems to work well in determining areas of communication and the resulting types of texts. A system-theoretical basis of linguistically composed areas of communication is presently a desideratum, but a desperately needed one. Thus, a number of contributions deal with the question of how concepts of Luhmann's system theory can be made compatible to the...