The 12 contributors to this volume show how texts across a wide range of text types hold together by different patterns of chunking and linking. The common purpose in all the contributions is to explore the nature of text patterning as a functional environment within which language operates.

1. Acknowledgements; 2. Introduction: Why 'patterns of text'?; 3. Colligation, lexis, pattern, and text (by Hunston, Susan); 4. Lexical signals of word relations (by Renouf, Antoinette); 5. Patterns of cohesion in spoken text (by Thompson, Susan); 6. Issues in modelling the textual metafunction (by Fries, Peter H.); 7. Mapping key words to problem and solution (by Scott, Mike); 8. The negotiation of evaluation in written text (by Bolivar, Adriana); 9. Some discourse patterns and signalling of theassessment-basis relation (by Jordan, Michael P.); 10. Repeat after me: The role of repetition in the life of an emergent reader (by Darnton, Ann); 11. Lexical segments in text (by Berber Sardinha, Tony); 12. Patterns of lexis on the surface of texts (by Coulthard, Malcolm); 13. Patterns of text in teacher education (by Edge, Julian); 14. The deification of information (by Sinclair, John McH.); 15. Name Index; 16. Subject Index