Christopher Butler, who holds an Honorary Professorship at Swansea, taught linguistics for 25 years in the UK, first at the University of Nottingham, then at what was what is now York St John University, where he held a Professorship in Linguistics. He took early retirement in order to devote more time to research and writing. He has published a number of books and more than 60 articles on functional linguistics, computational and statistical techniques of language study, and corpus linguistics, especially as applied to the study of English and Spanish. His 2003 book Structure and Function: A Guide to Three Major Structural-Functional Theories (Benjamins) offers, in two volumes, a detailed comparison of Functional Grammar, Role and Reference Grammar and Systemic Functional Grammar. In recent work, he argues that functional linguistics should strive to meet a set of conditions of descriptive and explanatory adequacy, and should give an explanatory account of how the speaker/hearer works. We therefore need to go well beyond the grammar as broadly conceived, to take into account the processes of language production and comprehension, as well as the patterns which systematically recur in naturally occurring data. Professor Butler is a member of the research group SCIMITAR (Santiago Centred International Milieu for Interactional, Typological and Acquisitional Research). He also co-edits, with Professor Robin Fawcett, the series Discussions in Functional Approaches to Language, published by Equinox, and is the Reviews Editor for the journal Functions of Language, published by John Benjamins, as well as holding positions on the editorial or advisory boards of other linguistics journals.

PDF file of  Chris Butler's publication list