A functional approach to register in the Preface to pastoral Care

Abstract

The functional approach to register proposed in this paper aims to provide a critical analysis that reveals the role played by King Alfred’s Preface to the Pastoral Care in realizing social action from a new perspective based on the combination of Martin’s and Halliday’s paradigms of field, tenor and mode. The data obtained represent an endeavour to discern how this study confers a new viewpoint to traditional perceptions relating to the text’s persuasive nature and to the presence of issues of authority and social inequality.