Abstract

Clinical linguistics has been described as ‘[t]he application of linguistic theories, methods and descriptive findings to the analysis of medical conditions or settings involving a disorder (or pathology) of language’ (Crystal 2008: 80). This chapter first briefly describes the ways in which systemic functional linguistics (SFL) has been applied to various types of communication disorder, before going on to present a comparative critique of the contribution that SFL has made to understanding the nature of these disorders. The chapter then presents a critical comparative appraisal of current and potential application of SFL to intervention for communication disorders, and describes how the study of clinical conditions has challenged and informed the SFL approach.