John Walsh

I am a recently retired linguist from the University of Adelaide where I taught and researched for the past ten years. I worked with a particular variety of functional linguistics, Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL). SFL is in the tradition of viewing language as a resource for making meanings. The aim is to understand how we use language to 'do' life, in all of our contexts of living. The theory proposes that the grammar of the language is in the service of making meanings about our world. It is an 'appliable' theory is interested to look closely at how language is used in differing contexts. The theory has been applied to education, to health, to translation studies, and more recently I have been involved in researching about how language is used in sport. The players, the coaches, the spectators in the stadium, the TV and radio commentators, the viewers at home, the sports journalists all draw differently on the one system of language as they focus on one particular match or incident in a match. As in important aspect of culture I am interested in how all of these different groups use language to participate in sport.