Thematic Progression in Saudi Postgraduate Business Students’ Multimodal Texts: An SF-MDA of Accounting Discourse

Hesham Suleiman Alyousef,Amerah Abdullah Alsharif

doi:10.21070/jees.v4i2.2582

Abstract

Thematic progression plays a vital role in organizing the information in a text and in enabling it to be understood and communicated effectively. Studies of multimodal business discourse have been confined to workplace contexts, and across the fields of management accounting, marketing, and finance. Based on Halliday’s (2014) analytical tools of systemic functional linguistic (SFL) and Kress and van Leeuwen’s (2006) analysis of images, an Systemic Functional Multimodal Discourse Analysis (SF-MDA) was conducted to explore THEME and INFORMATION structure in five international students’ texts in a key topic in accounting, namely financial statements. The participants are first-year Master of Commerce Accounting Saudi students enrolled in the Accounting Concepts and Methods module at an Australian university. The findings of the SF-MDA revealed the frequency of Theme reiteration and the linear Theme pattern in financial statements. The first pattern is employed in accounting tables to list the corresponding numerical values. The SF-MDA findings of the balance sheet corresponded with Kress and van Leeuwen’s (2006) approach to the analysis of grammar of visual design in terms of compositional zones.

Highlights

Thematic progression (TP) and t he composition of information value have a significant impact on the organization of texts since they represent the main textual features in academic writing
The purpose of this study is to investigate the use of TP patterning and the composition of information value in international postgraduate students’ texts in a key topic in accounting, namely the multimodal financial statements
The information structure analyses of the financial statements aimed to examine if Kress and Leeuwen’s ? system of the composition approach information value is in line with the structuring of information in the accounting tables

Summary

Introduction

Thematic progression (TP) and t he composition of information value have a significant impact on the organization of texts since they represent the main textual features in academic writing. Theme is regarded as the element which serves as the starting point for the message (Halliday, 2014). Since we have a tendency to generally depart from a familiar point, the Theme typically contains familiar/Given information. This suggests information that is either recoverable from the text itself or from the context. Once the Topical Theme has been identified all constituents following it are defined as part of Rheme or the New information. Theme and Rheme are the most important structural systems within the textual metafunction in Halliday’s 2014 systemic functional linguistics (SFL) approach since they contribute to a well-structured text

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Conclusion