Thematic progression in the writing of students and professionals

Hawes, Thomas

doi:10.1016/j.amper.2015.06.002

Cited by 35 publications

(36 citation statements)

References 3 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Unclassified

Order By: Relevance

“…In this pattern, one or more non-related T-units come between T-units with constant themes. The pattern is 'less heavy' than the constant theme progression (Hawes, 2015).…”

Section: Patterns Of Thematic Progressionmentioning

confidence: 93%

“…We started with McCabe's model but as we proceeded we noticed that a modified version of Constant Theme progression is frequently used in the RAs and if we do not take it into account in our analysis we cannot present a real picture of TP patterns in the RAs. This modified version which is also suggested by Hawes and Thomas (1997) is called Constant Theme plus Gap progression or Constant Gap progression (Hawes, 2015). In this pattern, one or more non-related T-units come between T-units with constant themes.…”

Section: Patterns Of Thematic Progressionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

A Comparison of Thematic Choices and Thematic Progression Patterns in the Research Articles of Well-established and Emerging Disciplines

Babaii

Atai

Shoja

2016

IJAL

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Several studies have employed the theme-rheme construct to examine the generic profile of research articles (RAs). However, they have mostly focused on the subject matter and nature of disciplines, and other disciplinary characteristics as contextual factors which can impact the genre realization have not been considered in the discourse analysis research. This work, therefore, investigates thematic choices and thematic progression patterns in the RA in relation to the status of disciplines as well-established or emerging fields. To this end, a corpus of 240 RAs of mechanical engineering, biomedical engineering, horticulture, and environmental science were analyzed using Halliday's (1994) framework of thematicity and McCabe's (1999) model of thematic progression (TP). The results showed significant differences in the distributions of unmarked and marked themes as well as the patterns of thematic progression between the well-established and emerging disciplines. Based on the findings of this study, we suggest further consideration of the status of disciplines in discourse studies which can serve disciplinary research and contribute to the body of research on science.

show abstract

“…In this pattern, one or more non-related T-units come between T-units with constant themes. The pattern is 'less heavy' than the constant theme progression (Hawes, 2015).…”

Section: Patterns Of Thematic Progressionmentioning

confidence: 93%

Section: Patterns Of Thematic Progressionmentioning

confidence: 99%

A Comparison of Thematic Choices and Thematic Progression Patterns in the Research Articles of Well-established and Emerging Disciplines

Babaii

Atai

Shoja

2016

IJAL

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Whereas multimodal communication research in tertiary contexts has been confined to mathematics (de Oliveira and Cheng 2011;Guo 2004;O'Halloran 1996O'Halloran , 2000O'Halloran , 2004O'Halloran , 2005O'Halloran , 2008a, history (North 2005), science and computing (AlHuthali 2007;Alshammari 2011;Drury et al 2006;Hsu and Yang 2007;Jones 2006), journalism and media (Hawes 2015), and nursing (Okawa 2008), SFL-based investigations of tertiary business discourse were limited to a few studies (Alyousef 2013(Alyousef , 2015a(Alyousef , 2015bAlyousef and Alnasser 2015a, b;Alyousef and Mickan in press). Hawes (2015) for example, investigated and compared thematic progression in professional journalists' texts with those of comparable length written by 18 international students in a pre-MA course, Inter-Communication.…”

Section: Literature Reviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Hawes (2015) for example, investigated and compared thematic progression in professional journalists' texts with those of comparable length written by 18 international students in a pre-MA course, Inter-Communication. The findings suggest teaching the principles of thematic progression, particularly to non-native speakers of English.…”

Section: Literature Reviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

A multimodal discourse analysis of the textual and logical relations in marketing texts written by international undergraduate students

Alyousef

2016

Functional Linguist.

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Thematic progression and the composition of information value contribute to the development of well-structured meaningful text. Discourse-based research of the textual features has been confined to language learning and workplace contexts, and in particular advertising and marketing research. However, no published study has explored and analysed the multimodal textual and the logic-semantic features in tertiary marketing texts. This case study employed a Systemic Functional Multimodal Discourse Analysis (SF-MDA) to investigate and compare thematic progression patterns and composition of information value in five business marketing plan reports. It also aimed to investigate the logico-semantic expansions between the visual semiotic resources and the text surrounding them. The SF-MDA of the marketing plan texts is underpinned by Halliday's (1994) systemic functional linguistics, Kress and van Leeuwen's (1996) composition of information value and Martinec and Salway's (2005) system for multimodal discourse analysis of logicosemantic relations. The findings of the SF-MDA revealed the extensive use of Theme reiteration pattern, followed by linear thematic progression pattern. Although multiple-Theme pattern was minimally employed, disciplinary-specific uses of this pattern in marketing discourse emerged. The findings suggest that the students have managed professional workplace practices by showing their understandings of marketing as part of overall business management. A number of other interesting findings related to textual and logico-semantic relations that exist between the tables and the graphs and the accompanying text were revealed. The SF-MDA of informational choices in the marketing texts extends Kress and van Leeuwen's (1996) functional interpretations of visual artefacts in terms of compositional zones. As the intersemiotic logic-semantic relations between graphs and tables and the orthographic texts surrounding them play a vital role in marketing discourse, tutors can introduce ways of expanding the meaning-making potential in these semiotic resources. Other pedagogical implications for the teaching and learning of writing are presented, particularly in the teaching of English for Business students.

show abstract

“…Interpersonal Themes include, for example, stance adverbials (boosters and hedges) and attitude adverbials, and the analysis results seem to indicate that these may be more natural to native speakers (see Examples 7 and 8). We may only speculate about the reasons, which may be ample, for example, a larger repertoire of these expressions, more experience of their use in natural contexts and mainly naturally acquired knowledge of English information structure through exposure to the language (Hawes, 2015), or simply native speakers' greater confidence in expressing emphasis as well as doubt. EAL writers' production, on the other hand, may be influenced by a lack of experience, lower level of knowledge of English information structure (which needs to be learned and practised) and/or a lack of confidence in expressing their stance towards the presented content by Czech authors who despite their education and expertise are often EAL users (hence the lower occurrence of interpersonal Themes in the CZENG corpus than in the ENG one).…”

Section: Contrastive Analysis Of Thematization In Anglophone and Czecmentioning

confidence: 99%

Intercultural variation in academic discourse: Theme zones and the build-up of coherence in research articles

Hůlková

Dontcheva-Navratilová

Jančaříková

et al. 2019

Topics in Linguistics

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

This paper explores the form and function of the initial part of a sentence, the “Theme zone” (Hannay, 1994; Fetzer, 2008), in the genre of research articles, with a threefold purpose. First, it deals with a comparative analysis of Theme zone patterns (i.e. employment of simple and multiple Themes – the latter being several different configurations of topical, interpersonal and textual Themes) in a corpus of research articles written by English authors and Czech EAL writers. The aim is to determine to what extent these writers differ in thematization and trace possible reasons for the differences. Second, the study offers an intercultural comparison of the realizations of topical, interpersonal and textual Themes, and finally, it looks into thematic progression in two excerpts from the corpus and how the Theme zone contributes to the construal of textual, interpersonal and topical coherence. In all three parts, intercultural variation can be observed, be it Czech authors’ preference for the [textual Theme] [topical Theme] configuration, their more frequent use of exclusive we and abstract rhetors in topical Themes and higher employment of textual Themes in the Theme zone, or their inclination to build coherence on a local rather than a more global level.

show abstract

Thematic progression in the writing of students and professionals

Cited by 35 publications

References 3 publications

A Comparison of Thematic Choices and Thematic Progression Patterns in the Research Articles of Well-established and Emerging Disciplines

A Comparison of Thematic Choices and Thematic Progression Patterns in the Research Articles of Well-established and Emerging Disciplines

A multimodal discourse analysis of the textual and logical relations in marketing texts written by international undergraduate students

Intercultural variation in academic discourse: Theme zones and the build-up of coherence in research articles

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About