This book offers a model of classroom discourse analysis that uses systemic functional linguistic theory and associated genre theory to develop a view of classroom episodes as 'curriculum genres', some of which operate in turn as part of larger unities of work, called 'curriculum macrogenres'. Christie explores the model and demonstrates the methodology of school discourse analysis in considerable detail. The methodology is set out, explained and exemplified in selections of classroom texts, both spoken and written, and over a range of subject areas, that cover the years of schooling from the preparatory or kindergarten class to the secondary school. Overall, schools emerge as major sites of symbolic control in a culture.