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.
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Berry, Margaret
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Berry, Margaret
2013Contentful 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.
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1997The Communicative Value of Intonation in English. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Daneš, František
1972Order of elements and sentence intonation. In Intonation, Dwight Bolinger (ed.). Harmondsworth: Penguin, 216–232.
2017Textual 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.
1981On the status of Theme in English: Arguments from discourse. Forum Linguisticum 6 (1): 1–38.
Fries, Peter H.
1995Themes, 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.
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Glaser, Barney G. & Anselm L. Strauss
1967The Discovery of Grounded Theory: Strategies for Qualitative Research. Chicago, IL: Aldine.
1995THEME 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
2009Key Terms in Systemic Functional Linguistics. London: Continuum.
Nakajima, Shin’ya & James F. Allan
1993A study of prosody and discourse structure in cooperative dialogues. Phonetica 501: 197–210.
O’Grady, Gerard
2010A Grammar of Spoken English Discourse: The Intonation of Increments. London: Continuum.
O’Grady, Gerard
2013An 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.
2017Intonation 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
1990The Roles of Intonation in English Discourse. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang.
Tench, Paul
1996The Intonation Systems of English. London: Cassell.
Thompson, Geoff
2007Unfolding 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.
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Wichmann, Anne
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Cited by 6 other publications
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.
2023. Theme in spoken language: when a tone group is not a clause. Journal of World Languages 0:0
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.
Vandelanotte, Lieven
2017. Favourite puzzles. English Text Construction 10:2 ► pp. 187 ff.
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