Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL), initially developed by the social semiotic linguist Michael Halliday, is recognized as a “useful descriptive and interpretive framework for viewing language as a strategic, meaning-making resource”.
As a semiotic approach which shares similar views with Aristotle’s classical rhetoric in terms of logos, ethos, and pathos, SFL views language as being structured according to three main kinds of meaning: textual, ideational, and interpersonal meanings.
With the most common explanation of terms, textual meanings are meanings about how “what we are saying hangs together and relates to what was said before and to the context around us”; ideational meanings are meanings about “how we represent experience in language”; and interpersonal meanings are meanings about “our role relationships with other people and our attitudes to each other”.
This can therefore be called classic for things concerning Text Analysis or Modern Rhetoric.