In a series of extremely influential articles published in the 1960s, Halliday illustrated that what the Prague School labelled as Theme was formed out of two separate but related systems which he labelled Theme and Information (1967a & b). However, as Information is a system grounded in spoken language, this separation has had the unfortunate consequence of prioritising the study of Theme in written language. The Thematic structure of spoken language and especially the interplay of Theme and intonation has been consequently neglected. The prosodic system of Key (Brazil 1997) functions like Theme to ground a message in its local context and signal how it is to be developed. This study, by uniquely examining the interplay between Theme and Key, is able to identify a number of novel meanings, the most significant of which is a focus on the enabling of Interpersonal meanings. By so doing, it illustrates that the full semogenetic meaning making potential of Theme, as an unfolding orientating device in spoken discourse, can only be revealed by examining the prosodic realisation of the Theme choices.
Bäcklund, Ingegerd. 1992. Theme in English telephone conversation. Language Sciences 14 (4): 545–565.
Berry, Margaret. 1996. What is Theme? A(nother) personal view. In Meaning and Form: Systemic Functional Interpretations, Robin P. Fawcett, Margaret Berry, Christopher Butler & Huang Guowen (eds). Norwood, NJ: Ablex, 1–64.
Berry, Margaret. 2013. Contentful and contentlight subject themes in informal spoken English and formal written English. In Choice in Language: Applications in Text Analysis, Gerard O’Grady, Tom Bartlett & Lise Fontaine (eds). Sheffield: Equinox, 243–268.
Boersma, Paul & David Weenink. 2010. Praat doing Phonetics by Computer. Computer programme. Version 5.3.52.
Brazil, David. 1997. The Communicative Value of Intonation in English. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Daneš, František1972. Order of elements and sentence intonation. In Intonation, Dwight Bolinger (ed.). Harmondsworth: Penguin, 216–232.
Forey, Gail & Geoff Thompson. 2008. Text Type and Structure. London: Equinox.
Forey, Gail & Nicholas Sampson. 2017. Textual metafunction and Theme: What’s ‘it’ about. In The Routledge Handbook of Systemic Functional Linguistics, Tom Bartlett & Gerard O’Grady (eds). London: Routledge, 131–145.
Fries, Peter H.1981. On the status of Theme in English: Arguments from discourse. Forum Linguisticum 6 (1): 1–38.
Fries, Peter H.1995. Themes, method of developments and texts. In On Subject and Theme: A Discourse Functional Perspective, Ruqaiya Hasan & Peter H. Fries (eds). Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 317–360.
Ghadessy, Mohsen. 1995. Thematic Development in English Texts. London: Pinter.
Glaser, Barney G. & Anselm L. Strauss. 1967. The Discovery of Grounded Theory: Strategies for Qualitative Research. Chicago, IL: Aldine.
Mathiessen, Christian. 1995. THEME as an enabling resource in ideational ‘knowledge’ construction. In Thematic Development in English Texts, Mohsen Ghadessy (ed.). London: Pinter, 20–54.
Matthiessen, Christian M. I. M., Teruya Kazuhiro & Marvin Lam. 2009. Key Terms in Systemic Functional Linguistics. London: Continuum.
Nakajima, Shin’ya & James F. Allan. 1993. A study of prosody and discourse structure in cooperative dialogues. Phonetica 501: 197–210.
O’Grady, Gerard. 2010. A Grammar of Spoken English Discourse: The Intonation of Increments. London: Continuum.
O’Grady, Gerard. 2013. An investigation of how intonation signals information structure. In Systemic Phonology: Recent Studies in English, Wendy S. Bowcher & Bradley A. Smith (eds). London: Equinox, 27–52.
O’Grady, Gerard. 2017. Intonation and systemic functional linguistics: The way forward. In The Routledge Handbook of Systemic Functional Linguistics, Tom Bartlett & Gerard O’Grady (eds). London: Routledge, 146–162.
Tench, Paul. 1990. The Roles of Intonation in English Discourse. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang.
Tench, Paul. 1996. The Intonation Systems of English. London: Cassell.
Thompson, Geoff. 2007. Unfolding Theme: The development of clausal and textual perspectives on Theme. In Continuing Discourse on Language: A Functional Perspective, Vol. 21, Ruqaiya Hasan, Christian Matthiessen & Jonathan J. Webster (eds). London: Equinox, 671–696.
Thompson, Geoff & Susan Thompson. 2007. Theme: Subject and the unfolding of text. In Text, Type and Texture, Gail Forey & Geoff Thompson (eds). London: Equinox, 45–69.
Wichmann, Anne. 2000. Intonation in Text and Discourse. London: Longman.
2024. Theme in spoken language: when a tone group is not a clause. Journal of World Languages 10:1 ► pp. 76 ff.
Bartlett, Tom & Gerard O’Grady
2019. Language characterology and textual dynamics: a crosslinguistic exploration in English and Scottish Gaelic. Acta Linguistica Hafniensia 51:2 ► pp. 124 ff.
Van Praet, Wout & Gerard O'Grady
2018. The prosody of specification: Discourse intonational cues to setting up a variable. Journal of Pragmatics 135 ► pp. 87 ff.
2017. Favourite puzzles. English Text Construction 10:2 ► pp. 187 ff.
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