The Analysis Of The Relation Between Thematic Choices And Text Types

Functional grammar has been, from the very day it came into being, lending the assistinghand to the enterprise of text linguistics. Concurrently and consistently, the topics of themeand text type have been discussed and debated. As for the relation between the two, manybelieve that a focus on thematic choices can be a useful aid to the establishment of texttypes. This paper attempts to make an exhaustive and convincing analysis of the relationbetween thematic choices and text types, arguing that every type of texts does have atendency on the choice of thematic structure.The topic for discussion is introduced at the beginning part of this paper and then the authorgoes on reviewing the two related aspects of analysis and notions which are often usedinterchangeably. The second chapter offers the criteria of how the 30 samples are collectedand categorized, and the methodology of how the present study is conducted as well.Chapter Three serves as the hub and nub of the whole paper. It approaches the analysis ofdata from the two perspectives of each thematic element and the patterns of thematicprogression. Through the study on the latter perspective which is considered to be static atclause level, limitation of seeking connections between patterns of thematic progressionand text types is discovered. The fourth chapter starts an attack on the problems discoveredby extending the notion of theme to the level of discourse and in the second section, probesinto the implications for English Teaching and Learning. In the end the author concludesthat only the integration of the analyses of both thematic element and thematic progressionpatterns can text types be established.This paper yokes the study of text types with the analysis of thematic choices also in lightof the relation between cohesion and coherence, especially in the illustration ofargumentative texts. The results found in this paper are consistent with previous studiesshowing that coherence of texts may not be realized solely by cohesive devices. In spite ofarguing that thematic choices in different text types are tendencies rather than absolutes, theauthor hopes that on the one hand, English teachers and learners pay more attention to thethematic choices within texts in reading and writing so as to comprehend and compose textsmore accurately and effectively; on the other hand, language researchers delve further intothe system of theme and the other aspects of the textual metafunction in functionalgrammar.