Designed for researchers and students interested in exploring how speakers and writers construe meaning through discourse, this title draws on tools for discourse analysis developed in systemic functional linguistics and register and genre theory. It requires no prior knowledge of functional linguistics, and avoids academic complexity wherever possible. It builds an accessible set of analytic tools that can be used with ease by scholars from a range of disciplines. These tools are introduced in clear steps through analyses of a set of stories, arguments, reviews, procedures and other texts, that exemplify how meanings are constructed and contested in a culture, by focusing on current issues of truth and reconciliation in post-apartheid South Africa. Readers are guided through these text analyses from five complimentary perspectives on meaning. By means of these detailed analyses, the text provides a practical resource for application in any field in which discourse analysis has a role, including educational research, critical discourse analysis, cultural studies, text linguistics and language and literacy teaching. It should be equally useful as a textbook for undergraduate or post