The analysis of classroom discourse dates back at least to Sinclair & Coulthard's (1975) often-cited study, which inspired researchers to examine patterns of student-teacher interaction. In particular, their description of a typical classroom interactional pattern, the Initiation-Response-Evaluation (IRE), inspired further research that focused on issues of control and how interaction is structured. Cazden's (1988) volume influenced a further generation of researchers to ask questions about how patterns of language use reveal what counts as knowledge and learning.

Classroom discourse analysis makes further substantive contributions. For Christie, two major themes have emerged from the study of classroom discourse: recognition that classroom activity is structured experience, and that language is part of social practice. These themes articulate with Christie's theoretical frameworks, Halliday's (1978, 1994) theory of language as social semiotic, systemic functional linguistics (SFL), and Bernstein's (1990, 1996) theory of pedagogic discourse. Christie demonstrates, using SFL, how discourse analysis enables interpretation of the ways patterns of classroom language function to position teacher and student, and how it reveals the ways access to knowledge is made available in classroom activities.

Chap. 1 reviews research on classroom discourse analysis and introduces Christie's perspective. Although readers unfamiliar with SFL may need additional resources to understand the finer points of her approach, the proposals that form a key contribution of the book are quite accessible: She argues for understanding the role of the teacher as authority and the role of the student as one who is apprenticed. This view of the roles of teacher and student is elaborated in chap. 2, in which Christie challenges what she characterizes as the dominant educational theories of the past generation: those suggesting that students' development is not promoted through formal instruction. Such a perspective, according to Christie, does not recognize capacities developed in a sustained way over time through goals that are clearly articulated. Instead, it views teachers as facilitators of the unfolding of students' intrinsic “competence.” She suggests that this conception “leaves poorly defined … goals for teaching and learning, and what particular capacities in using language might best serve those goals. Competence is not an end in itself, promoted in some fashion apart from social relationships, the meaning predispositions of the learner, contexts for learning or goals for teaching and learning” (pp. 32–33).

Those familiar with Christie's previous work will recognize her model of pedagogic discourse with its focus on curriculum “macrogenres” (e.g., Christie, 1997). As she focuses on the values that underlie schooling and the nature of the knowledge that is constructed in classroom activity, she argues that analysis of a complete teaching/learning cycle, with all of its teacher talk, student talk, and other elements, is necessary to demonstrate the role language plays in negotiating that construction. The notion of macrogenre provides a basis for collecting and selecting for close text analysis passages that reveal the role language plays at different stages of activity, the ways the relationships of participants are negotiated over time, and the principles of evaluation that apply. The book analyzes five macrogenres in successive chapters that represent movement from the early grades into secondary schooling, demonstrating how classroom language changes as students move into disciplinary learning.

The lessons analyzed illustrate both effective and less effective teaching practices. Early primary school genres come in for substantial criticism, as Christie analyzes the “morning news” genre (known also as “sharing time”) and demonstrates that it offers few opportunities for students who do not already have skills in talking about experience to gain the ability to do so, because the teacher does not share the experience the students are attempting to re-create through language, and so cannot assist in scaffolding the development of new ways of using language. Christie suggests that, instead, teacher and students should work together to re-create shared experiences in language.

Examining classroom discourse across a range of grades and subjects, Christie shows that classroom language changes as students mature. Her notion of register (e.g., Christie 1991) is key in showing this development, since classroom language is realized through a first-order, regulative register, as well as a second-order, instructional register. These registers are the forms through which schooling becomes a powerful agent in shaping students' consciousness, because they relate to interpersonal behavior (how to act in the classroom) as well as to “the patterns and methods of handling information, reasoning, thinking, arguing, describing and explaining particular to the instructional fields” (163).

In the early grades, the regulative register is foregrounded, but as students move into the higher grades, it becomes more implicit. For example, teachers use fewer direct imperatives and more modality in directing behavior (e.g., So you're probably best to sit next to somebody that you will work with (165)), and abstractions take the place of overt expressions of authority (e.g., The main requirement is … [166]). The regulative register in this sense “appropriates” the instructional register, positioning students to adopt technical language and the patterns of reasoning that it construes. Where teaching is successful, students are enabled to reason in particular ways that reflect the values of the disciplines they are studying.

A key concept for Christie is logogenesis, which she contrasts with phylogenesis, the development of a language over time, and ontogenesis, the development of language in an individual. Logogenesis happens when a curriculum macrogenre includes interdependent genres that enable students to use specialized language. In chap. 3, Christie analyzes an early childhood classroom in which logogenesis is not at work. The teacher assigns writing after reading a story aloud, but the teacher treats the act of writing itself as sufficient indication of learning and development, with no attention given to the children's texts once they are drafted. In addition, Christie shows that the teacher has no clear idea about the linguistic features of the texts the students are to write. Few directions are given for the writing task, criteria for evaluation are vague, and the teacher cannot articulate what might constitute evidence of success. All texts are accepted as “good,” and the children do not reflect on the language used or the structure created in their stories. Using SFL tools, Christie shows how the students' texts are modeled after the story that was read aloud, or are written in modes that the children were already familiar with, rather than following the teacher's oral models. The writing is not linked with past or future activities to give students a sense of working toward larger goals.

In chaps. 4 and 5, Christie provides examples of effective logogenesis in two upper elementary classrooms and a ninth-grade geography classroom. Her analysis reveals the learning that occurs at different phases of the lessons and how the students' language develops as they work with new ideas and technical language. She also shows that the often-maligned IRE structure can be an effective tool for consolidating knowledge, and she suggests that “the only reliable measure of the value of either small group talk or the IRE (or indeed any other pattern of language use) must lie in an examination of the role and significance of the particular pattern of talk in the total body of language that marks the macrogenre” (118).

In chap. 6, Christie describes the role of schools as “initiation and induction into ways of knowing, ways of valuing, ways of reasoning” (177), and she suggests that a better understanding of the mechanisms of this role is necessary to enable learning for all students. This, ultimately, is why Christie believes that the analysis of classroom discourse and a better understanding of the ways language construes meaning is important for setting clear goals for education.

Christie's agenda is ambitious; she addresses issues of the power conferred by specialist discourses, the authority of the teacher in structuring opportunities to learn them, and the positioning of the students “whose consciousness is shaped and who acquire various ways of behaving, responding, reasoning and articulating experience of many kinds” (162). She shows how these issues are illuminated in the analysis of classroom discourse. Researchers interested in fine-grained analyses of language will find valuable models here for linking language structures with the meanings they construe. Those unfamiliar with SFL can benefit from Christie's discussion of the values and goals of education as manifested in the language of teaching and learning. Her analysis of classroom discourse provides tools and frameworks for students and researchers to focus on the role that language plays in structuring learning opportunities.