Relevant literature and research questions are presented in this chapter, and it is structured as follows. The first section of this chapter deals with the theoretical framework of the present study, including the theory of Systemic Functional
Linguistics (SFL) and SFL concepts such as metafunction, register, and genre. In the second section, details and discussion on Theme and Rheme, Theme types, and thematic progression (TP) are provided. The third section presents empirical research on TP, which explores TP from different approaches and in various disciplines; it also contains studies on instruction in TP. Research questions of this study are then
proposed in the last section of this chapter.
Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL)
The aim of this study is the cohesion in EFL learner’ writings, namely, the relation of meanings in their texts. The focus of this study is, therefore, on the textual meaning, which is concerning how learners organize their information in their texts.
The concept of textual meaning originated from Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL), which was developed by Michael Halliday and his colleagues from the Prague School.
Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) is a functional linguistic approach that targets how language is used by people and how it is structured for use (Eggins, 2004). It is named systemic since “compared with other theories it foregrounds the organization of language as options for meaning” (Martin & Rose, 2007, p. 21). In this light, relationships of choice between elements of a language is the key. It is termed functional because “it interprets the design of language with respect to ways people use it to live” (Martin & Rose, 2007, p.24). To scholars of SFL, therefore, language is closely related to our social environment where people communicate in a
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language to make sense of their experience and enact their social relationship (Halliday & Hasan, 1976; Halliday & Matthiessen, 2013). That is, speakers of a language make choices of language (what you say) so as to reach communication in various social contexts and for particular social purposes.
Metafunction
To realize the goal of communication, SFL scholars proposed three metafunction components that exist in a language system, including the ideational component, interpersonal component, and textual component:
1. Ideational component: According to Halliday and Hasan (1976), the first component, ideational component, deals with the content of the language, construing human experience with lexicogrammar. It includes “what’s going on, who’s doing what to whom, where, when, why and how and the logical relation of one going-on to another” (Martin & Rose, 2007, p. 24). It can be further categorized into experiential ideational metafunction, which deals with experience and culture, and logical ideational metafunction, which presents logical relations indirectly resulted from experience.
2. Interpersonal component: The second component is interpersonal component, which is concerned with the attitudes, motives, and judgments of speakers, and how they encode the relationships in certain situations (Halliday & Hasan, 1976).
Namely, when people communicate in a language, they have to act out their social relationship with one another, and negotiating social relations concerns
“how people are interacting, including the feelings they try and share” (Martin &
Rose, 2007, p. 24).
3. Textual component: The third component is the focus of this study, the textual component, which indicates how language is structured as a piece of speech or
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writing. Textual component “build[s] up sequences of discourse, organizing the discursive flow and creating cohesion and continuity” (Halliday & Matthiessen, 2013, p. 31). It is related to “information flow: the ways in which ideational and interpersonal meanings are distributed in waves of semiosis, including
interconnections among waves and between language and attendant modalities (action, image, music etc.)” (Martin & Rose, 2007, p. 24).
Register
Aside from the metafunctions of language, Halliday and Hasan (1976)
considered that social context was also the factor that determined which linguistics features to appear. They termed the social context the “register” of language, constituted by “the linguistic features which are typically associated with a
configuration of situational features - with particular values of the field, mode and tenor” (Halliday & Hasan, 1976, p. 22). The “field” of discourse concerns the social action which is happening, what the participants are acting out; the “tenor” of discourse refers to the participants who are engaged in the action; the “mode” of discourse means the nature of language, which indicates “the channel taken by the language - spoken or written, extempore or prepared - and its genre, or rhetorical mode, as narrative, didactic, persuasive, 'phatic communion' and so on” (Halliday &
Hasan, 1976, p. 22). As mentioned above, the textual metafunction combines the resources of language, and mode concerns the situation in which it is realized.
However, the context of language involves not only social context and situation, but also the culture factors which influenced how language is actually used, that is, the
“genre” of the language.
8 Genre
As mentioned at the beginning of this section, SFL experts paid attention to the context or situation in which language is being used, and “genre” was the term they used to describe the context of culture. Genre helps carry out the cultural purpose of texts, and it is realized through the structure or the pattern of text (Eggins, 2004).
Genre denotes how people reach their culturally proper goals through language.
Therefore, for a text to achieve its purpose in a culture, the choice of words or phrases at textual level must be carefully selected so as to abide by the conventions of its genre. If the generic identity of a text cannot be attributed to a certain genre by readers, the text might become problematic (Eggins, 2004).
From SFL approach, language consists of three metafunction components (ideational, interpersonal, and textual), and linguistics features are influenced by situational factors of register (field, tenor, and mode). Both register and genre should be considered in order to understand how language is used, while genre is a broader and more abstract concept that determines the feature of language in a specific context of culture. Martin and Rose (2007), therefore, placed genre at a higher stratum which functions independently from register. They believed that field, tenor and mode were resources which could be generalized across genre. The following Figure 1 illustrates the relationship and hierarchy between metafunction of language, register, and genre:
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Figure 1. Genre as an additional stratum of analysis beyond tenor, field and mode (Martin & Rose, 2007, p. 17)
SLF linguists targeted the function of language through a system of choices, and they analyzed language in terms of three metafunction components. The textual metafunction component concerns how language is structured as a piece writing, and it was explored in the present study. How information is organized in the writings of Taiwanese EFL learners was investigated. To realize this research purpose, the cohesive development of the language in these writings was analyzed and patterned through an analytical framework developed by SFL theorists, the system of Theme and Rheme. This system is introduced and explained in the following section.
Theme and Rheme
The notion of Theme and Rheme was proposed by Prague School linguistics. To understand the notion of Theme and Rheme, the unit of meaning in a language system should be introduced beforehand. In SFL, the basic unit of language in use is “text,”
which is a semantic unit of meaning instead of grammar, and the Theme system explains the thematic structure of each clause. Halliday and Matthiessen (2013) defined “text” with the following terms:
The term ‘text’ refers to any instance of language, in any medium, that makes sense to someone who knows the language; we can characterize text as
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language functioning in context. … Language is, in the first instance, a resource for making meaning; so text is a process of making meaning in context.
(Halliday & Matthiessen, 2013, p. 3) A text can be easily identified as a unified whole by people using a language.
That is, when people encounter a written or spoken passage of language, it is not hard for them to distinguish the text from a random combination of irrelevant clauses (Halliday & Hasan, 1976). The basic element of a text is “clause,” which comprises a text. To SFL theorists, the meaning of a clause is the main focus of analysis, and they proposed three lines of meaning in a clause based on the three metafunctions
mentioned above (Halliday & Matthiessen, 2013). The ideational metafunction is manifested by the “Actor” in the clause, which is the participant of the process construing human experience; the interpersonal metafunction is realized by the
“Subject,” which shows the exchange of meaning between interlocutors (Halliday &
Matthiessen, 2013). As for the textual component, a related system addresses the textual meaning of a text, the system of Theme and Rheme. This system is introduced in the following subsection.
Definition of Theme and Rheme
Theme is the focus of the clause as a message. Halliday and Matthiessen (2013) defined it as the following:
The Theme functions in the structure of the clause as a message. A clause has meaning as a message, a quantum of information; the Theme is the point of departure for the message. It is the element the speaker selects for ‘grounding’
what he is going on to say.
(Halliday & Matthiessen, 2013, p. 83)
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The function of Theme is to suggest what the clause is going to be about, and Theme also “locates and orients the clause within its context” (Halliday &
Matthiessen, 2013, p. 89). Therefore, speakers select a Theme for each clause so as to express his or her organization of the message (Halliday & Hasan, 1976). The part of message selected as Theme becomes prominent to the listener, so the listener can process the message from that starting point (Halliday & Matthiessen, 2013).
Theme is usually placed at the clause initial position, and the rest of the clause is termed “Rheme.” According to Halliday and Matthiessen (2013), Rheme is the part of clause where Theme is developed. Each clause is composed of a Theme and a Rheme, and Theme should always proceed Rheme in the order. In this way, the Theme can be the highlight of clause as the starting point of message, which makes it more
prominently noticed by listeners. As people tend to depart the message from familiar information to unfamiliar information, Rheme is usually made up of “new”
information (Eggins, 2004; Martin & Rose, 2007). This structure of clause as
message, which is comprised of Theme and Rheme, is defined as “thematic structure”
(Halliday & Matthiessen, 2013).
Since whatever is selected as Theme may be prominent, the choice of Theme may greatly influences how the text is processed by its listener or reader. In addition, the analysis of the way Theme and Rheme are patterned in a clause can reveal the
“information flow” of text (Eggins, 2004, Martin & Rose, 2007). How Theme is realized in a clause is explained in the following subsection.
The Realization of Theme
As mentioned above, the choice of Theme is significant in that it contributes to the organization of text. Therefore, linguistic elements which can manifest and function as Theme were presented in this subsection, and the boundary between
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Theme and Rheme was defined. In order to identify this boundary, the realization of different Theme types should be understood beforehand. In Halliday and
Matthiessen’s (2013) model, Theme is considered as the first group whichever can manifest experiential structure in a clause. In declaratives, the most common category of Theme is a participant, which is presented by a nominal group (e.g., Teenagers) and functions as the Subject in this clause (Martin & Rose, 2003). It is the first constituent of the clause, and any elements that follow this constituent is the Rheme of the clause.
Theme can be differentiated by its “markedness.” When something is “marked,”
it is usually atypical compared to the norm and is noticed prominently by its listener or reader. In normal cases of declarative clauses, marked Theme is defined as the Theme which is not realized by the grammatical Subject of the clause but something such as an adjunct (e.g., comment adjunct, conjunctive phrase); it might be noticed prominently by listeners or readers (Halliday & Matthiessen, 2013; Martin & Rose, 2003). In clauses where the Theme conflates with the grammatical Subject of a clause, the Theme of the clause is categorized as “unmarked Theme” (Halliday &
Matthiessen, 2013). For example, in Table 1, the unmarked Theme is Teenagers:
13 Table 1
Mood Type and Unmarked Theme Selection (adapted from Halliday & Matthiessen, 2013, p. 104)
Mood of clause Typical (‘unmarked’) Theme declarative nominal group functioning as Subject
e.g., Teenagers love to participate in talent shows.
interrogative: yes/no first word (finite operator) of verbal group plus nominal group functioning as Subject
e.g., Should teenagers spend time practicing talents?
interrogative: wh- nominal group, adverbial group or prepositional phrase functioning as interrogative (Wh-) element
e.g., How long do students spend in their clubs?
imperative: ‘you’ verbal group functioning as Predicator, plus preceding don’t if negative
e.g., Don’t smoke on the campus.
imperative: ‘you and me’
let’s plus preceding don’t if negative e.g., Let’s go to the mall.
Note. The unmarked Theme in each clause is underlined.
The markedness of Theme depends on the mood of the clause, namely, Theme element functions differently in declaratives, interrogatives, and imperatives (Eggins, 2004; Halliday & Matthiessen, 2013). In interrogative clauses, the speaker asks a question in order to find the answer. The typical Theme, therefore, should be the
“what one wants to know.” In yes/no interrogatives, the unmarked type of Theme is the finite operator of verbal group and the Subject, as shown in Table 1, the unmarked Theme of the yes/no interrogative is “Should teenagers.” As for wh- interrogatives,
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the unmarked type of Theme is realized the Wh- element, as shown in Table 1, the unmarked Theme of the wh- interrogative is “How long” (Halliday & Matthiessen, 2013).
In imperative clauses, the speaker usually orders someone to do something, while the Subject is usually absent in the clause. Thus, the Predicator, a verbal group, is the unmarked Theme. In negative imperative clauses, “don’t” may also be in the unmarked Theme. As shown in Table 1, the unmarked Theme of the negative imperative is “Don’t smoke.” Another type of imperative clause includes “you and me” and beings with “Let’s,” and in this case, the unmarked Theme is the first element “Let’s” as shown in Table 1 (Halliday & Matthiessen, 2013).
Marked Theme carries ideational meanings and functions differently compared with unmarked counterparts. Some marked Themes manifest circumstantial elements, including adverbial or prepositional phrases, and some may be the participants that do not function as the Subject (Martin & Rose, 2003). Marked Theme may be utilized to establish a new phases in a discourse by setting a new time or changing participants while scaffolding discontinuity (Martin & Rose, 2003).
In the above, the notion and the realization of Theme are presented. The system of Theme was adopted in this study because it is responsible for the textual meaning of clause, making the organization of meaning more comprehensible to the reader (Al-Sharah, 2012). It is a useful framework for analyzing the textual meaning in a clause since these functional components significantly contribute to the cohesive
development of the text (e.g., Belmonte & McCabe, 1998; Mellos, 2011; Eggins, 2014; Jing, 2014; Ebrahimi & Ebrahimi, 2012c; Ebrahimi & Khedri, 2012; Wang, 2007). Eggins (2004) even claimed that Thematic choices contribute to the internal cohesion of text, and that “skillful use of Thematic selection results in a text which
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appears to 'hang together and make sense'” (Eggins, 2004, p, 321). She suggested that what we choose as the Theme and how the Topical Theme are realized may largely depend on the mode of the language, and using them right reflect the speakers’ or writers’ ability to organize information suitable for the mode. For marked Theme, she argued that successful use of marked Theme can improve the connection of clauses.
For example, a previous information can be nominalized as marked Theme in order to be the departure of the new information. Above all, the way thematic elements
succeed to one another, namely, the way Themes and Rhemes are patterneed across clauses, contributes to cohesion (Eggins, 2004). Successful thematic choice will lead to efficient thematic development, which contributes to the cohesion of the text (e.g., Downing, 2001; Li, 2009; Mellos, 2011; Wang, 2007), and the patterns of how thematic elements develop are illustrated next.
Thematic Progression (TP)
The principles concerning the choice of Theme and Rheme have received great attention since appropriate choice of Themes may improve the flow of information (Eggins, 2004). The underlying patterns of how Themes and Rheme are selected in text were explored by Danes (1974), and he proposed the concept of “thematic progression,” which was considered to be the “skeleton of plot.” Thematic
progression (TP) in a discourse determines information organization of a text, exposes the information flow, and contributes to textual cohesion (Eggins, 2004). Therefore, TP is usually regarded as an explicit framework of text analysis to reveal the thematic selection and progression of a text.
This study adopted Danes’ (1976) framework of TP, in which he categorized TP into four major types, which are (1) Simple linear TP (or TP with linear thematization of Rhemes), (2) TP with a constant Theme, (3) TP with a derived Theme (or a
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hyperTheme), and (4) Exposition of split Rheme. Each type of TP is described and demonstrated with a figure and an example text below:
TP with a constant Theme. In TP with constant Theme, the item in the Theme of the first clause is also selected as the Theme of the subsequent clause. Figure 2 presents the pattern of TP with a constant Theme.
Figure 2. TP with a Constant Theme (Danes, 1974, p. 118)
According to Eggins (2004), by repeating the Theme from the previous clause, the writer may effectively achieve lexical cohesion and maintain the clear focus of the text (Eggins, 2004). Nonetheless, using constant Theme as the departure of each clause prohibits the text from developing, so this cannot actually lead to progression of the text. That is, the new information which is introduced in Rheme cannot be further developed or elaborated on. In the following example, the Theme of the first clause (Young people) becomes the Theme of the second and third clause:
Young people tend to add variety in their life and they refuse to be stuck in monotonous daily life. Besides, young people like to be attentive and get recognition from their peers as was as the elderly. In fact, they indeed benefit from it.
Simple linear TP (or TP with linear thematization of Rhemes). As proposed by Danes (1974), simple linear TP is the most elementary pattern of TPs, in which the item from the Rheme in the first clause is reiterated as the Theme of the next. Figure 3 illustrates how Themes are arranged in simple linear TP:
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Figure 3. Simple linear TP (Danes, 1974, p.118)
In this pattern, a new Theme is deployed in the following clause as opposed to the case of constant TP, and this development can be considered cohesive because the Theme is promoted from the Rheme of the previous clause (Eggins, 2004). This type of TP also leads to a cumulative development of a text in that it develops new
information in the succeeding Theme cohesively. In the following example, the Theme of the second clause (They) is the Rheme of the first clause (young people):
Talent competition is very popular among young people in Taiwan. They seek for achievements, fame, or they simply need audience.
TP with a derived Theme. In TP with a derived Theme, “the particular Themes in subsequent clauses are derived from a hyperTheme or from the same overriding Theme” (Belmonte & McCabe, 1998, p. 18). Figure 4 showed the type of progression:
Figure 4. TP with a Derived Theme (Danes, 1974)
HyperTheme can be realized as the topic clause of a paragraph or a text section (Danes, 1974), and the following clauses are controlled or predicted by this clause.
HyperTheme is a higher level of clause which is broader or more general, and the
HyperTheme is a higher level of clause which is broader or more general, and the