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Article published In: English Text Construction
Vol. 15:1 (2022) ► pp.1–29

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A contrastive look at Theme as point of departure in English and Spanish academic writing

 | Universidad Complutense de Madrid
Published online: 27 March 2023
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https://doi.org/10.1075/etc.00048.aru
Abstract
This paper offers a detailed study of Theme as point of departure in English and Spanish academic texts. A corpus of around 45,000 words is examined from different perspectives to compare the realizations, functions and interplays of the point of departure in these two languages. Examples reveal crosslinguistic contrasts in terms of (a) the preferred realizations of thematic elements, (b) the strategies to maintain participant identity and present new participants and (c) the resources used to construe texture. We will see that whereas English favours thematic non-pronominal noun groups, Spanish combines these with other realizations. Additionally, the different syntactic characteristics of each language have a reflection on different ways of signalling semantic continuity and on textual development in general. The findings presented in this paper should make a significant contribution to the existing literature on Theme, as well as on academic writing and contrastive typological research.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Data and methodology
  • 3.The view from below: Realizations of the point of departure
  • 4.The view from above: Functions of the point of departure
  • 5.The view from roundabout: Threads of meaning in the construal of texture
  • 6.Conclusion and pointers to the future
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
References (43)
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Cited by (2)

Cited by two other publications

Arús-Hita, Jorge
2024. Theme as point of departure in English and Spanish academic writing and casual conversation. Language, Context and Text. The Social Semiotics Forum 6:2 ► pp. 302 ff. DOI logo
McCabe, Anne & Ana Elina Martinez-Insua
2024. Systemic Functional Linguistics and its Applications. In Reference Module in Social Sciences, DOI logo

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