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David Banks is Emeritus Professor of English Linguistics at the Université de Bretagne Occidentale, Brest, France, where he was formerly chairman of the English Department, director of ERLA (Equipe de Recherché en Linguistique Appliquée), and director of the Masters programme in Translation and Technical Writing.. He is also a former chairman of AFLSF (Association Française de la Linguistique Systémique Fonctionnelle). He has published over 90 academic articles, and authored or edited over 20 books. His publication, The Development of Scientific Writing, Linguistic features and historical context (Equinox 2008), won the ESSE (European Society for the Study of English) 2010 Language and Linguistics Book Award. His current research interests include the linguistic analysis of scientific text, and its emergence in English and French in the late seventeenth century, and the application of SFL (Systemic Functional Linguistics) to English and French.