Multiple Theme
Theme and Given/New information
Problems in identifying the Theme
Troubleshooting
Theme in text (Peter Fries's article)
Tasks
 

Theme	Rheme
point of departure of clause as message; local context of clause as piece of text.	Non-Theme – where the presentation moves after the point of departure; what is presented in the local context set up by Theme.
initial position in the clause	position following initial position

(table from Martin et al)

Multiple Theme

• The theme extends from the beginning of the clause up to (and including) the first element that has a function in transitivity. This element is called the 'topical Theme'; so we can say that the Theme of the clause consists of the topical Theme together with anything else that comes before it. (Halliday: 1994:53)

What elements go into the Theme?

1. The first experiential element in the clause (participant/process/circumstance)
2. Any element preceding the first experiential element in the clause (modal/connective adjuncts, conjunctions, finite, vocative,

Note: WH words (listed here as interpersonal/textual) also represent participants or circumstances, and can thus double as topical Theme.

Maximally extended Theme (Halliday 1994:55)
 

well	but	then	Ann	surely	wouldn’t	the best idea	be to join the group
	and	secondly		unfortunately		in spring	the house is far too cold
continuative	structural	conjunctive	vocative	modal	finite	topical	Rheme
textual			interpersonal			experiential
Theme

 

Unfortunately	however	these two theories	are known to be inconsistent with each other.
interpersonal	textual	experiential
Theme			Rheme

 

Yeah, well	maybe	it	is on the top there
textual	interpersonal	experiential
Theme			Rheme

Theme/Rheme and Given/New

• Two systems for organizing information in a message: theme and information

Long thematic constituents

1. The question of who we are – what kind of creature is a human being – has been with us for a long time.
2. Only a person who knew that Aubrey St John was going to be here at this time could have killed him.
3. The fact that the role of the parents and the elders does not appear to be relevant to the younger generation is an important contributory factor in the intergenerational gap and the alienation of the youth.
4. Teachers who normally lived in the city but had accepted an appointment in an institution located in a village and had put in less than five years, were also considered urban.
5. Sarah Smith, an immigration official who questioned Mr Malka when he arrived on a Eurostar train from Brussels, said that he had told her that Miss Simmons was going to be his wife.

1. What he meant by this was that he was no longer an apprentice.
2. What they did was go into the stern of the boat.
3. The reason he asked you where you were going is because he hoped you would be visiting other areas.

1. What I do is none of your business.
2. What seems important is not the fulfilment of the demands but whipping up of an agitation.
3. How this system will replace the long and detailed questioning and examination of the patient and the personal interaction around treatment between patient and doctor that appear to be essential components in the practice of traditional medicine is not, however, explained.

For functions of it, see Martin et al, p. 32
 

	Unmarked		Marked
Non-nominalized	you  Theme Given	were to blame Rheme New (focus)	you Theme New	were to blame Rheme Given
Nominalized (predicated Theme)	it’s you Theme New	who were to blame Rheme Given	it’s you Theme Given	who were to blame Rheme New (focus)

From Halliday 1994: 301: Marked and unmarked information focus combined with unpredicated and predicated Theme.

1. It was Hegel who first approached a theory of self through a description of the changing forms of consciousness.
2. It was Heidegger, however, who emphasized the social web of forces that converge to form a self.
3. It is not only in action scenes that this storytelling device can be used.
4. It is in this subphase that Mahler locates the occurrence of "psychological birth."
5. It was really at that point that the industrial factory was born.

1. It was ‘unEnglish’ to spy on anybody. ( : to spy on anybody was ‘unEnglish’)
2. It was generally believed that disease and misery were a retribution for past sins.
3. It was no secret that the people didn't always welcome our presence.
4. It is not our intention to discuss the details of these fundamental functions of plants and their importance to the aquarium.


Predication vs. thematized comment

5. It was no secret that the people didn't always welcome our presence. ( : that people didn't always welcome our presence was no secret)
6. It was really at that point that the industrial factory was born. (* that the industrial factory was born was really at that point)

1. There is a picture of the president on the front page.
2. There were some rather dramatic episodes over hairstyles.

Troubleshooting – is this a topical Theme?

The (topical) Theme predication test (identifies participants, processes, circumstances):
It was …[theme] …that …

Oh maybe the battery's running down.

• It’s the battery that may be running down.
• *It’s maybe that the battery is running down.

• *It’s sometimes that you can hint that fireworks ...
• It’s at the start of one of these quieter patches that you can hint that fireworks …

• It’s after some time that the roots become firmly attached.

Is it any wonder that, when it comes to T. S. Eliot, pond-owners are ambivalent?

On the one hand, he spoke for all of them in imperishably declaring April to be the cruellest month: while pond-owners do not care one way or the other about breeding lilacs out of a dead land, they worry themselves sick, every April, about breeding frogs out of a dead pond, because April is when frogs descend upon our ponds to breed, and when, as the direct result, the cruellest things happen to them.

Which brings us, unfortunately, to T. S. Eliot's other hand: for he loved not frogs, but cats, the more practical the better, and, thanks to an irony which must have the old Modernist spinning gleefully in his grave, it is practical cats which are the very source of the April cruelty.

Here's how it works.

Of all the many things they like killing, cats like killing frogs best.

Frogs are not only less elusive than mice and sparrows, they taste better.

We know this because if they didn't, Frenchmen would be called Mice or Sparrows.

However, for 11 months of the year, frogs are elusive enough to escape the feline diet, since, as soon as a paw appears at the edge of their pond, the frogs leap from reed or lily-pad and scull rapidly out of harm's way.

But they cannot do this in April, because in April frogs have big heavy things on their backs. They have other frogs there.

Theme in text

Definitions of Theme:

• different patterns of Thematic progression correlate with different genres, i.e. patterns of thematic progression do not occur randomly but are sensitive to genre; and
• the experiential content of Themes correlates with what is perceived to be the method of development of a text or text segment. (Fries 1981)
• the experiential content of Themes correlates with different genres, and
• the experiential content of the Themes of a text correlates with different generic elements of structure within a text. (Fries 1995)

Thematic progression: Where do themes come from, and how do they relate to other themes and Rhemes in the text?
(based on a paper by František Daneš, 1974 (Czech linguist)

Simple linear (chained): T1à R1. R1=T2. T2à R2. R2=T3.

One evening in spring, a man and a woman moved into a new house. Just outside their door there was a garden. It was a pretty garden, with flowers and grass and even a tree.

Continuous/constant theme (topically linked): T1à R1. T1à R2. T1 à R3.

Text 1:
Once upon a time three bears lived in a house in the woods. There was a great big bear, a medium-sized bear and a little, small wee bear. All the bears like porridge and had their own special porridge bowls. The great big bear had a great big bowl; the medium-sized bear had a medium-sized bowl; and the little, small wee bear had a teeny, weeny bowl.

Text 2:
Elgar, Sir Edward

Sir Edward Elgar, b. near Worcester, June 2, 1857, d. Feb. 23, 1934, is generally considered England's greatest native-born composer since Henry Purcell. He received his early musical training from his father, a music seller, violinist, and organist of St. George's Roman Catholic church in Worcester. In 1879 he had a few violin lessons in London, but as a composer Elgar was self-taught. He succeeded (1885) his father as church organist in Worcester and pursued a minor, local career – teaching, conducting, and composing. In 1889 he married his student and admirer, Caroline Alice Roberts, whose love and encouragement transformed him; their marriage of three decades coincided with the most creative period of Elgar's life.

Thematic Progression with derived themes
Hypertheme (superordinate term to which all the themes relate)

operetta
The word operetta, derived from the Italian, means literally "little opera." The progenitors of operetta were The Beggar's Opera (1728), an English ballad opera with a text by John Gay and a score of popular songs and folk tunes, and La Serva Padrona (The Maid-Mistress, 1733), a work by the Italian composer Giovanni Pergolesi. The German Singspiel also influenced operetta, because, like ballad opera, it combined music and songs with spoken dialogue. This combination of songs and dialogue still distinguishes operetta from opera, in which dialogue is usually set in recitative, a style of musical declamation midway between speaking and singing.

Underline the Themes, and decide how the thematic structure contributes to the development of the text.

FEBRUARY, 2100 A.D
TIME TO ADJUST YOUR SEIKO PERPETUAL CALENDAR.
The new Perpetual Calendar watch from Seiko is Future Proof.
Its intelligent-quartz technology will self-adjust the date accurately for the next hundred years, including all the leap years.
Only once every decade will you need to change the super-efficient lithium battery.
Even in the ladies' model the battery lasts an astonishing five years.
It is also unerringly accurate – to within 20 seconds a year, thanks to an oscillator that operates at six times the frequency of conventional quartz watches.
At last.
A watch that is truly Future Proof.

SPIRIT AND COMMUNITY

1. There is nothing in the whole range of human experience more widely known and universally felt than spirit.
2. Apart from spirit there could be no community, for it is spirit which draws men into community and gives to any community its unity, cohesiveness, and permanence.
3. Think, for example, of the spirit of the Marine Corps.
4. Surely this is a reality we all acknowledge.
5. We cannot, of course, assign it any substance.
6. It is not material and is not a "thing" occupying space and time.
7. Yet it exists and has an objective reality which can be experienced and known.
8. So it is too with many other spirits which we all know: the spirit of Nazism or Communism, school spirit, the spirit of a street corner gang or a football team, the spirit of Rotary or the Ku Klux Klan.
9. Every community, if it is alive has a spirit, and that spirit is the center of its unity and identity.
10. In searching for clues which might lead us to a fresh apprehension of the reality of spirit, the close connection between spirit and community is likely to prove the most fruitful.
11. For it is primarily in community that we know and experience spirit.
12. It is spirit which gives life to a community and causes it to cohere.
13. It is the spirit which is the source of a community's drawing power by means of which others are drawn into it from the world outside so that the community grows and prospers.
14. Yet the spirit which lives in community is not identical with the community.
15. The idea of community and the idea of spirit are two distinct and separable ideas.
16. One characteristic of the spirit in community is its givenness.
17. The members of the community do not create the spirit but rather find it present and waiting for them.
18. It is for them a given which they and they alone possess.
19. The spirit of the Marine Corps was present and operative before any of the present members of it came into it.
20. It is they, of course, who keep it alive and preserve it so the same spirit will continue to be present in the Corps for future recruits to find as they come into it.