Topics to be explored include (in roughly the order of presentation; we may not cover everything!)

• The historical/theoretical background to Halliday’s conception of context of situation and context of culture (Malinowski, 1935, Firth, 1959, 1962, 1968, Butt 2001)
• The emergence of Halliday’s conception of context of situation and context of culture (e.g. Halliday 1956[2002], Halliday et al 1964, Halliday 1977, Halliday 1985; Gregory and Carroll 1978; Mitchell 1957)
• The relations of Halliday’s conception of context of situation and context of culture to the architecture of his theory (Halliday 1977, 1992, 2003)
• The principles/assumptions entailed in Halliday’s conception of context of situation and context of culture (various)
• Examples of analysis of context based on Halliday’s conception of context of situation and context of culture (Halliday 1977, 1984, 1985)
• “Orders” of context (Halliday 1977, 1978)
• Halliday’s writings on “society” (e.g. Collected Works Volume 10, Language and Society) and “sociolinguistics” in relation to his conception of the contexts of situation and culture
• Halliday’s (later) notion of the “eco-social” environment (Halliday 2003)
• Criticisms of Halliday’s conception of context both internal to SFL (e.g. Martin, 1992, Hasan 2009) and external to it (e.g. van Dijk 2008)
• Arguments for “genre” as alternative conception of context of culture: “genre” in relation to Martin’s conception of language (e.g. Martin 1992, 1998); arguments against (Hasan 1995)
• The place of context in the co-genesis of langue and parole (Hasan 2001/in press, in press a)
• How material situational setting is distinct from context as a semiotic and linguistic construct (e.g. Hasan 1973, 1999, 2005/in press, 2009a)
• Why in some contexts, the text is actively construing a context able to be negotiated ‘in medias res’, while in others the context is largely already determined  (Hasan 1981)
• The distinction between a semiotic description of parameters of context (Relation, Contact, Action) and a linguistic account of the parameters of context (Tenor, Mode, Field) (Hasan 2001/in press)
• How text structure and texture relate to the parameters of context (e.g. Hasan 1978, 1985b, 1994, 2004)
• The potential for paradigmatic descriptions of the context variables (Hasan 1999, 2004, 2009a, Hasan in press b)
• How contexts vary (e.g. ‘actual’, ‘imaginery’, ‘virtual’) (Hasan 2001b, 2005)
• The modelling of intra-contextual variation (e.g. Hasan 2004)
• The significance of intra-contextual variation for the reproduction of social relations (e.g. Hasan 2009b)
• The importance of intracontextual variation to applications of SFL
• Writings on context by linguists within SFL (Bowcher 2001, 2010, Butt 2003, 2008, Butt and Wegener 2007, Cloran 1987, 1999, Lukin, in press a, b, Lukin et al 2010[2008],  Martin 1992, Moore 2003, Scott 2010, Wegener 2011,)