Class 5
Language, Context and Texture: Thematic Structure
Language, Context and Texture
Texture: "what makes the text hang together"
Thematic Structure
Theme:
- starting point of the clause, "point of departure" (Halliday & Mathiessen, 2004) , the first constituent in the claus
- it makes the message "fit smoothly into the unfolding language event" (Thompson, 2004)
- frames, prepares, delimits the content of the core of the message, they help listeners "hook" the upcoming message into the earlier ones, it's the "ground from which the clause takes off" (Halliday et al 2004 in Thompson, 2004)
- generally goes from the "familiar" into the "unfamiliar" (though watch out for cases of grammatical emphasis!), and may mirror the intonational Given-New structure
Theme according to metafunction
Topical
presents experiential meaning in terms of transitivity, especially participants and circumstances (and processes, in the case of imperatives!). It generally presents the "what about", "topic", or "where from", among other experiential ideas
Unmarked
- subject (decl)
- finite (int)
- predicator (imperative)
- wh-element (Wh-int)
- adjuncts: circumstantial
- fronted objects, participants "repackaged" as circunstantials ("As for X...")
Interpersonal
instantiates interpersonal meaning, as a form of evaluation, judgement, appreciation, and also engages the listener
- modal adjuncts
- vocatives
- polarity and mood elements
- unfused finites in interrogatives
Textual
makes the cohesive ties in the text manifest, it does "cohesive" or "linking" work
- continuity adjuncts (continuatives)
- conjunctive adjuncts
- conjunctions
Special Thematic Constructions: Enhanced
Thematic Equatives
Theme-Rheme structure presented in terms of equivalence.
- wh-clefts
- demonstratives + to be
- ing clauses + to be
Predicated themes and Thematised comments
Elements given emphatic status and at times, presented as New:
- It-clefts
- It + comment + that/inf clauses.