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Article published In: Grammar, usage and discourse: Functional studies offered to Kristin Davidse
Edited by Lieven Vandelanotte, Wout Van Praet and Lieselotte Brems
[English Text Construction 10:2] 2017
► pp. 274–297

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Theme and prosody

Redundancy or meaning making?

 | Cardiff University |
Published online: 19 October 2017
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/etc.10.2.05ogr
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 (Halliday, M. A. K. 1967a. Notes on transitivity and theme in English: Part 1. Journal of Linguistics 3 (2): 199–244. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar & . 1967b. Intonation and Grammar in British English. The Hague: Mouton. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar). 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 (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.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar) 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.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction: What does Theme do?
  • 2.What is Theme?
  • 3.Prosody, Theme and Key
  • 4.The corpus
  • 5.Discussion: The relation between high Key and marked/unmarked Theme
    • 5.1Category A: Opening of turn
    • 5.2Category B: A new paratone
    • 5.3Category C: Unexpected direction
    • 5.4Category D: To project contrast or specify an individual or action
    • 5.5Category E: Direct attention towards the consequences of a future action
    • 5.6Category H: Assessment of desirability
  • 6.Conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
References (37)
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