This handbook presents the central concepts, theories and methods of text linguistics and describes the different sorts of text, primarily from a functional perspective. The description is not restricted to the communication typologies of exemplars of fields of activity - incl. medicine, politics, law, and the mass media, but also presents selected areas of application, such as creative writing, foreign language learning and intercultural communication. The handbook is a standard work for text linguistics and provides students and linguists with a comprehensive overview of the present state of research.