Thematic Structure

Halliday (1994: 37-8):

The Tradition Of Systemic Theory

 Halliday (1994: xxvi):

Discourse Analysis

Halliday (1994: xxii):

Theme And Rheme

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 529):

From the speaker's point of view, a piece of information has a specific point of departure; the Prague scholars referred to this as the "Theme". The Theme, in English, always includes one element that has an experiential function, typically a participant in the process; it may include other elements as well, for example an interpersonal expression of modality if the speaker is thematising his/ her own point of view. One way of signalling what is thematic is by putting it first in the clause, as is done in English, where everything up to and including the first experiential element constitutes the speaker's chosen point of departure; for example But surely time is defined as that which you can't turn back?, where the Theme is but surely time. Here the speaker is construing a message around the theme of 'what I'm saying is contrary to what went before' (but); 'it's my opinion, and I'd like to challenge you with it' (surely); and 'the starting point is the topic of time'. The remainder of the clause constitutes the body of the message, labelled grammatically as the "Rheme".

Textual Cohesion And Structure

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 528-9):

Since these resources are oriented towards discourse, many of the "textual" systems in any language have a domain potentially higher than the clause and clause complex; they set up relationships that create semantic cohesion, and these ate not restricted by the limitations of grammatical structure. 

But they also contribute a critical dimension to the overall grammar of the clause. In this guise, the clause functions as a quantum of information; it is construed as a message, with a range of possible structures providing for different interpretations according to the discourse environment in which it occurs. 

These structures have been less fully described than those of the other metafunctions; they were brought to the notice of grammarians by Mathesius and his colleagues of the Prague school in the first half of the present century. But it seems that one typical way of construing the clause as a message is as a combination of two perspectives, that of the speaker and that of the listener (the latter, of course, being also as modelled for the listener by the speaker).

Each Language Construes Experience In Its Own Way

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 523):

We have outlined the picture from the point of view of English, but doing so as far as possible in a way that would enable the relevant questions to be raised for other languages. In the last resort each language construes experience in its own way — has its own "characterology", as the Prague linguists expressed it. But every language embodies a working, and workable, schedule of compromises, that taken all together constitute its speakers' construction of reality.

The Logico-Philosophical vs Rhetorical-Ethnographic Orientations in Western Thinking About Meaning

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 415-6):

We can identify two main traditions in Western thinking about meaning (see Halliday, 1977):

(i) one oriented towards logic and philosophy, with language seen as a system of rules;

(ii) one oriented towards rhetoric and ethnography, with language seen as resource.

It is typically the logical-philosophical tradition that provides the background for work on knowledge representation and proposals for the knowledge base. Since the 50s, a link has been forged between this tradition and cognitivism under the general rubric of cognitive science. 

However, although it is less often referred to, the rhetorical-ethnographic tradition is equally relevant to work on the modelling and representation of knowledge — for example, in recent times, the work on folk taxonomy carried out by anthropologists and anthropological linguists (often in the framework of ethnoscience) and the work on intellectualisation in the Prague School framework are central to understanding the organisation of the ideation base. 

Our own work here falls mainly within the second tradition — but we have taken account of the first tradition, and the general intellectual environment in which versions of our meaning base are being used also derives primarily from the first tradition. Indeed, the two traditions can in many respects be seen as complementary, as contributing different aspects of the overall picture. Our own foundation, however, is functional.

Mainstream work in psycholinguistics, e.g. Miller & Johnson-Laird (1976), is in general located within the logico-philosophical tradition. Two other distinctive contributions to the study of meaning within linguistics, those of Lamb (1964, 1992) and of Wierzbicka (1980, 1988), derive in more or less equal measure from both the major intellectual movements we have referred to.

The two orientations towards meaning thus differ externally in what disciplines they recognise as models.

Context vs Register

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 321):

Together, field, tenor and mode define the 'ecological matrix' in which particular types of text are processed: there is a systematic relationship between such matrices (particular combinations of field, tenor and mode values) and particular types of text. We can see this clearly with actual instances of text — for example, an individual recipe or weather forecast; but these are instances of general classes, to be characterised in terms of the systemic potential that is instantiated in them. 

That is, there is a correlation not only between a contextual matrix and a given instance of a recipe but also between that matrix and the linguistic potential that is deployed in recipes in general. This latter correlation is known as a functional variety or register of the general systemic potential. 

This much has been known for a long time — the notion of functional dialect was worked out by the Prague School in the 1930s (see e.g. Havranek, 1932, and Vachek, 1964), and systemic register theory has its roots in Firth's (e.g., 1957) work on restricted languages. …

However, we can take one further step, as systemic theory did in the 1970s (see Halliday, 1978a), and recognise that the co-variation between context and language is not undifferentiated — it is differentiated according to the functional diversification of each of the two strata: the variables of context correlate respectively with the metafunctions of the language, field with ideational, tenor with interpersonal, and mode with textual. These pairs are mutually predictive.

Blogger Comments:

This is potentially misleading. A register is the linguistic potential that is correlated with the contextual matrix. That is, a register is not the correlation.

Theme: Point Of Departure

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 529):

From a speaker’s point of view, a piece of information has a specific point of departure; the Prague scholars referred to this as the “Theme”. The Theme, in English, always includes one element that has an experiential function, typically a participant in a process; it may include other elements as well, for example an interpersonal expression of modality if the speaker is thematising his/her own point of view.

Textual Structures: Origins

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 528-9):

These structures have been less fully described than those of the other metafunctions; they were brought to the notice of grammarians by Mathesius and his colleagues of the Prague school in the first half of the [20th] century.

A Language & Its Construction Of Reality

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 523):

In the last resort each language construes experience in its own way — has its own “characterology”, as the Prague linguists expressed it. But every language embodies a working, and workable, schedule of compromises, that taken all together constitute its speakers’ construction of reality.

Origins Of The Concept Of Register

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 321):

… the notion of functional dialect was worked out by the Prague School in the 1930s … and systemic register theory has its roots in Firth’s work on restricted languages. The concept of register is also recognised in computational linguistics under the heading of sublanguage, particularly in work on machine translation.