Linguistic realizations and genre instantiation from the systemic-functional perspective

ABSTRACT The aim of this article is to draft a reading path oriented by relevant aspects of systemic functional theory which reveal the instantiation of genres of the story family. We focus on the notions of language stratification, realization and instantiation to explain the notion of genre in Systemic-Functional Linguistics and to analyze the linguistic realizations that demonstrate the socio-communicative purpose and the schematic structure of genre within a sample of texts socially recognised as fables, frequently used in the Brazilian school context.