This volume summarizes the results of a congress held in Greifswald, Germany, on 6-8 December 2007, on the subject of approaches to describing types of texts. System theory describes social systems based on a uniform method of thought that seems to work well in determining areas of communication and the resulting types of texts. A system-theoretical basis of linguistically composed areas of communication is presently a desideratum, but a desperately needed one. Thus, a number of contributions deal with the question of how concepts of Luhmann's system theory can be made compatible to the linguistic study of text types, as well as how they can be transferred to other areas and contribute to solutions. The themes include: the evolution of text types, the value of the system-theoretical emergence levels of factual, temporal, and social for describing types of text, as well as the role of text types in social systems. German text.