Method Of Development (Fries)

Halliday (1994: 61):

The Favourite Type Of Clause In Modern Scientific English

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 262):

These two syndromes [see previous post] — really variants of a single syndrome — define the type of clause that might well be considered as the favourite type of modern scientific English.  

The metaphorical 'things' are packaged processes or qualities that have thematic or informational value in the text, construed as Theme in the clause or New in the information unit (N-Rheme in the clause: see Fries, 1992).  

The metaphorical 'process' is one of the typical semantic relations that link figures into a sequence: 'cause* & 'time' are the prototypical relations in question, but in modern writing 'identity' has tended to take over as the central type — often by a further metaphorical step whereby causes becomes is the cause of, results becomes is the result of.

Method Of Development (Fries 1981)

Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 126):

The significance of these [thematic] patterns emerges when we come to consider the importance of clause theme in the overall development of a text.  By itself the choice of Theme in each particular instance, clause by clause, may seem a fairly haphazard matter; but it is not.  The choice of clause Themes plays a fundamental part in the way discourse is organised; it is this, in fact, that constitutes what has been called the ‘method of development’ of the text (see e.g. Fries, 1981, and contributions to Ghadessy, 1995; and to Hasan & Fries, 1995).  In this process, the main contribution comes from the thematic structure of independent clauses.  But other clauses also come into the picture, and need to be taken account of in Theme–Rheme analysis.