Thematic Progressions Research Articles

The thematic organization of consumer safety instructions in English

Abstract This study investigates how the content of consumer safety instructions is organized in Themes and N-Rhemes and connected by thematic progressions. The Themes are chiefly directives or representations of the product and its usage. The goal of safety instructions, on the other hand, i.e. avoiding dangers and their negative outcomes, is mainly represented in the N-Rhemes. Thematic progressions are frequently linear, which reflects the expert/non-expert relationship between the writers and readers, or derived, which reflects the somewhat disjointedness of this text type. There are also many Rheme iterations connecting imperative clauses. In this respect the thematic organization of procedural texts differs significantly from texts where declarative clauses are predominant.

IT IS NOT JUST A SONG FOR CHILDREN

A Song is a good medium for children to learn about culture. Through songs, songwriters can convey their native culture, which they regard as valuable for future generations to inherit. There are several songs for children in Indonesia written by talented songwriters that portray the distinctive qualities of Indonesia’s culture. For the listeners to recognize the Indonesian virtues implied in the songs while simultaneously enjoying the songs, the songwriters demonstrated some strategies that allowed them to convey the intended culture. This study attempted to determine how songwriters managed to pass culture through songs and what culture they tried to convey. A semiotic analysis, including textual analysis, thematic progression, and sign analysis, was conducted on five popular songs for children from four well-known songwriters in Indonesia. The results showed that the songwriters utilized the material process to help the children visualize the content of the songs and used existential phrases and a variety of marked themes, including conditions, adjuncts, and dependent themes, to convey many key points in a single sentence. In addition, the songwriters also employed a combination of multiple thematic progressions to develop the subject, zigzag thematic development to maintain the text's logical relation, and reiterative thematic progression to emphasize the theme of the text. The findings are valuable as references, especially for those who wish to write music for young listeners

Thematic Progression Used on Introduction of Journal of Teaching of English

This study examined the thematic progression in the introduction of the Journal of Teaching of English. This study aimed to determine the types of thematic progressions used and the most common types of thematic progressions used in the introduction of the journal. This study used qualitative descriptive as a research design. The data of this study were from six introduction journals written by students divided into three research areas: teaching, linguistics, and literature. After collecting the data, the data were analyzed based on the Bloor and Bloor (2004) framework. The findings showed that three of the six journals did not apply the four types of thematic progression. The first journal of teaching did not apply the derived theme pattern, whereas the second journal of teaching and the first journal of linguistics did not apply the split rheme pattern. However, overall, this study found four types of thematic progression: constant theme pattern, linear theme pattern, split rheme pattern, and derived theme pattern. Out of four types, the findings also showed that constant theme pattern was the most commonly used type (134 times), followed by linear theme pattern (63 times), split rheme pattern (22 times), and derived theme pattern (14 times). This study concluded that students applied various types of thematic progression in making the introduction of the journal in order to become coherent.

Type of themes and thematic progression patterns in low achiever’s descriptive writings

The Low Achiever’s writing is frequently categorized as the low coherent text due to the quality of their writings based on the rubric used at school. Hence, the focus in this study is to analyze the Types of Theme and Thematic Progression patterns found in Low Achiever’s Descriptive Writings with descriptive-qualitative research design. The objective is to observe the coherency quality of low achiever’s based on the analysis of Theme and Thematic Progression. The steps are selecting two low achiever’s descriptive texts based on the school’s rubric, dividing them to clauses, analyzing both the Theme and the Thematic progression, then providing the results of the analysis. The result shows that all types of Themes and Thematic Progressions are found in both writings. The Unmarked Topical Theme and Constant Theme Patterns are most frequently used. The conclusion is that Low Achiever’s Descriptive Writings cannot be considered as a low-coherent text based on School’s rubric only, Theme and Thematic Progression analysis is suggested to be conducted for extra observation and evaluation despite of the easy and common themes many constant types used to start the clauses in both of their writings. Keywords: descriptive text, low achiever’s writings systemic functional linguistics, theme, and thematic progression

중-한 문학번역의 주제 전개 방식 비교 연구 - 루쉰의 『아Q정전』과 21개의 한역본을 중심으로 -

Drawing on the concept of thematic progression based on Daneš (1974) and Zhu’s (1995) classification, this paper quantitatively compares the thematic progressions in the literary work ‘The True Story of Ah Q’ and its 21 Korean translations, to demonstrate how Chinese in the original and Korean in translations achieve textual equivalence in terms of cohesion. The theme, what the text is talking about, and the rheme, the development of the theme, maintain the cohesion of the text through thematic progression. The data analysis reveals that thematic progression patterns and their shifts in translation pertain to certain regularities in their frequency. In the original work, the Chinese language mainly uses ‘TP with a constant theme’, ‘simple linear TP’ and ‘TP with a constant rheme’ to organize the text, while the Korean translations also use ‘TP with derived theme’ and ‘TP with split rheme’ to organize the discourses. It is fair to say the Korean translations use a richer thematic progression than the original work. It highlights the fact that translators will generally follow the thematic progression of the original text in the process of the translation, but they also use additional thematic progressions in accordance with the Korean language to organize the texts.

How A Student Develops Paragraphs : A Thematic Progression Analysis of Student Works on Short Story

The issue of theme and rheme has attracted several researchers to do researchon theme and thematic progressions especially writing skill in English Language Teaching. Thematic progression is essential in writing due to its role in maintaining the continuity and information flow of the text. In other words, thematic progression highly contributes to the cohesion and coherence of a text. This study aims at exploring how a student develops a short story. The writer selected entire paragraphs from the short narrative in order to demonstrate developmental technique. The short narrative was then studied using theme progression analysis to determine how it progressed throughout the story. This study was conducted in descriptive qualitative. The researcher used Coding the paragraph, Analyzing the type of thematic progression of each Paragraph and Classifying and calculating the percentage of each type of thematic progression. In analyzing the thematic progression, there are three kinds of thematic progression: theme reiteration, the zig-zag pattern, and the multiple- rheme patterns. The findings show that the multiple- rheme pattern as the most dominant organization used within the short story, realized in 16 times (66,67%), theme reiteration is the second realized in 5 times (20,83%), and the zig-zag pattern is realized in 3 times (12,50%). The conclusion was that all types of thematic progression were used in short story.

Exploring Thematic Progressions in Two Excerpts From Amma Darko’s Faceless

This study explores thematic progressions in two excerpts from Amma Darko’s Faceless. The study aims at looking into the different types of thematic progressions used in the selected excerpts to decode there-from the deep meanings linguistically encoded by the author. The study further aims at examining how the different thematic progressions used in the studied texts contribute to their cohesion and contextual coherence. The research appeals to the mixed quantitative and qualitative methodology. Via this method, the number of thematic progression patterns identified has been quantified per excerpt to pave the way to the interpretation of the findings that ensued. The study has arrived at impressive results. Among several others available in the interpretation of the findings subsection, Amma Darko has purposefully not used the Split-Rheme Pattern to avoid a complex writing style that would make her writing not accessible to her readership. The simple linear thematic progression and the overriding theme reiteration patterns extensively used in both texts have allowed the author to emphasize the key thematic points of the studied texts. Moreover, the theme reiteration development strategy used in both texts has provided them with clear focuses. Some of these include skin bleaching, tradition and marriage in Africa, street children, women’s life conditions in Ghana to name but a few. For deeper meanings decoding in the studied excerpts, further studies on discourse-semantics, contextual coherence, conjunctive and lexical relations, as well as experiential and interpersonal meanings could pick up from this article findings.

Thematic and Informational Structure in English Journalistic Discourse

Theme is the point of departure of a clause. The organization of sentence has two parts theme and rheme. The theme typically contains familiar known or given information , and frequently serves to present given information. Rheme is the rest of the message , so rheme contains new information. The present study investigates thematic and informational structure in journalistic discourse headline and text in nominalization , nominal group, and passivation. The journalistic discourse consists mainly of declarative sentences to avoid breaks. The word order of thematic element patterns and their organization occur according to the term of markedness , unmarked and marked themes. The sentence elements in thematic position attract the readers' attention as noted by Halliday (2014). The data of the study have been taken from varied English newspaper, magazine and journals. The models are Halliday's (1985,2014) functional grammar and Paltridge's thematic progressions ( Zig-Zag , Continuous reiteration , C gap , C type and multiple theme /split rheme).

A Portrait of an EFL Learners' Explanation Text: Cohesion and Coherence

This study aims to explore cohesion and coherence in an explanation text written by an EFL learner. To do this, the cohesive devices of the explanation text are analyzed. Also, the text is analyzed using the Thematic progressions theory to find out the logical relationship of the sentences and whether or not the text can meet the readers’ expectations. There are several steps to analyze both elements. The first is broking up the paragraphs of the text into sentences. The second is using Thematic progressions to analyze the text. Finally, the writer analyzed the cohesive devices which function to connect sentences. All those data later are elaborated in paragraphs as descriptive-qualitative research design is employed in this study. The results shows that, in term of cohesive devices, the writer uses direct repetition, partial repetition, and same lexical set to build lexical cohesion. It is also found that the writer uses reference, substitution, and ellipsis to build grammatical cohesion. However, the writer seems to have insufficient knowledge to use the cohesive devises correctly. Additionally, the analysis of Thematic progressions shows that some sentences in the text have no logical relationship. Lastly, this study finds that the writer also seem to have insufficient knowledge of schematic structures of the explanation text.
 Keywords: Exposition text; Cohesive Devices; Thematic Progression

Cohesion and Coherence in Undergraduate Students’ Argumentative Essays

This study aims to investigate cohesion and coherence in argumentative essays written by undergraduate students at Syekh Nurjati state Islamic institute of Cirebon, West Java, Indonesia. This study used discourse analysis as a research design. Five argumentative essays were chosen based on purposive sampling. The five argumentative essays were analyzed using Halliday and Matthiessen (2014) theory that contributing to the cohesion of the text, namely cohesive devices. Then, it was analyzed using Thornbury (2005) theory about coherence. The results of this study showed that undergraduate students at Syekh Nurjati state Islamic institute of Cirebon tend to use reference more frequently than the other grammatical cohesive devices. From 755 occurrences of grammatical cohesive devices which presented in the five argumentative essays, 532 of them were in the form of reference. Besides, they also tend to use repetition more often than the other lexical cohesive devices in their argumentative essay. It always present in the five argumentative essays. Furthermore, the thematic progressions were organized well. It is showed by the occurrence of two or more thematic progressions in each argumentative essay.

ANALYZING THEMATIC STRUCTURE IN INDONESIAN FOLKTALES IN ENGLISH VERSION: A SYSTEMIC FUNCTIONAL GRAMMAR (SFG)

This research is entitled “Analyzing Thematic Structure in Indonesian Folktales in English Version: A Systemic Functional Grammar Study (SFG)”. The objectives of this study are analyzing and describing the themes, their elements and thematic progressions of Indonesian Folktales in English Version. The collected data, in this research, were taken from the book entitled “Indonesian Folktales” published in 1981 by Pustaka Media Publisher. One data, Princess Sumur Bandung which consists of 50 paragraphs and 221 clauses was chosen to be analyzed based on the theory of Systemic Functional Grammar (SFG) of Gerot and Wignell (1994). The method and technique used in this study are a descriptive qualitative method. The results of this research reveal that (1) there are two kinds of theme-rheme patterns are found; they are simple theme-rheme patterns and multiple theme-rheme patterns. In details, the simple theme-rheme patterns contain constant theme-rheme pattern, linear theme-theme rheme pattern, and derived theme-rheme pattern, while multiple ones contain a combination of constant and linear theme, a combination of linear and derived theme, and a combination of constant, linear and derived theme-rheme pattern. Besides, the combination of constant and linear theme-rheme pattern are the most frequently distributed. While the elements of themes which found are textual, interpersonal and ideational elements. Textual elements cover continuative, structural conjunction, wh-relative and conjunctive adjunct. Interpersonal elements cover modal adjunct, vocative, wh-interrogative and finite verbal operator. Ideational elements cover nominal group, noun, adverbial group, prepositional phrase, process, complement, group complex and adverb.

Students’ Writing Quality: Its Coherence and Cohesion

Students’ writing quality has become the focus of education research nowadays. A good quality writing should fulfil the requirements of coherence and cohesion. Coherence shows how the sentences in the text are arranged which usually follow certain structure, and cohesion shows how they are connected to each other. This study aims to investigate the students’ writing quality in both aspects. Using systemic functional linguistics approach, 10 students’ writing on recount text is analysed. The result of the study reveals how good the students on the fourth semester can write the text and what devices they use to establish the quality. The students can follow the generic structure of recount texts well. However, only 50% has reorientation. In addition, they employ different thematic progressions,

The Use of Thematic Progression in the Journal Artcile of “U-JET”

This study aimed to evaluate thematic progressions pattern in students’ journal article written by undergraduate students. This study employed qualitative research in the form of written discourse analysis. The documentation observation sheet is used to analyze the patterns apperead in the article written by students. Out of 10 students chosen as the sample. The results of this study revealed that from the three patterns, zigzag pattern is the most frequently used by the students. The second is re-iteration pattern and the last one is multiple theme pattern. It showed that the students can employed the patterns though they never learn about systemic functional linguistics before. But, the results of their writing is not really coherence. Because the lack of thematic progression pattern used. For the consistency, there are several students who already consistent in their writing, though the rest is still not consistent. However, they never learn about this. Therefore, it can be said that understanding the thematic progression is important because it can make the writing effective and coherence.

The Implementation of Thematic Development in Exposition Texts by EFL Learners

The ability to implement the Thematic development is important in writing exposition text. Moreover, the exposition text is written to convince the readers. It means the writers are required to achieve the readers’ expectation. This study therefore aims to explore EFL learners’ exposition texts using Thematic progressions. The analysis of this element reveals the logical relations which become the main aspect in the text to achieve micro-level of coherence. Three exposition texts written by high, average and low proficiency level learners, are analyzed using systemic functional linguistics approaches on discourse analysis. The analysis reveals that the exposition text written by high proficiency level learner successfully implements the Thematic progressions and hence it achieves the micro-level of coherence. The Theme re-iteration patterns are implemented to keep the text focused. The zig-zag patterns are used to construct newly introduced information. Then, the multiple Theme patterns are implemented, especially in thesis statements of the texts, to preview the argument that will follow in the texts. Differently, the exposition text written by average proficiency level learner overuses one of the patterns, namely the Theme re-iteration patterns. This makes the text stuck in only same idea. However, the micro-level of coherence is still achieved as the logical relations of the text are still implemented successfully. Lastly, the exposition text written by low proficiency level learner unsuccessfully implements the Thematic progressions and hence the micro-level of coherence is not achieved. In sum, the implementation of Thematic progressions helps the texts to hang together and make sense.

Theme-Rheme structure in Chinese doctoral students' research writing ---- From the first draft to the published paper

This study examines the first draft and the published version of the Discussion sections of 20 medical research articles produced by Chinese doctoral students to track the changes in Theme-Rheme structure made in the process of revision. The results show that the modifications included conjunctive adjuncts and coordinating conjunctions that were used improperly in the first drafts. Half of the projecting clauses starting with the first person pronoun “we” were changed. More than half of the long, fully lexicalized pre-subject ideational components were modified so that the topic-revealing information could be reached more quickly. Most importantly, the majority of information discontinuity, represented by deviated thematic progressions, was adjusted through revision, which greatly increased the readability of the papers. In summary, the modifications in terms of Theme-Rheme structure are prominent and contribute essentially to the readability as well as publishability of the articles. Novice ESL/EFL research writers may lack and need the knowledge of the structure even though they are advanced language learners/users. It is recommended that explicit instructions regarding the structure be incorporated in a graduate-level writing class and teacher training be performed to ensure effective instruction.

THEMATIC PROGRESSIONS OF THE 2015 TEFLIN ARTICLE ABSTRACTS IN APPLIED LINGUISTICS

Coherence is one of the characteristic of good academic writing, including abstract that represent the whole content of research article in order to be able to show what messages want to be expressed in the abstract. This study investigated the English abstract TEFLIN in applied linguistisc written by Indonesian speaker in its coherence by analyzing the theme and rheme. This study focuses on (1) identifying the theme which are dominantly used in 2015 TEFLIN article abstracts written by non-native speaker of English (2) identifying thematic progressions which are dominantly used in 2015 TEFLIN article abstracts written by non-native speaker of English (3) finding out coherences’ quality of the research article abstract section in 2105 TEFLIN article abstracts in applied linguistic based on thematic progression. This study was designed by using descriptive qualitative. The results show that the type of theme dominantly used in 2015TEFLIN article abstracts written by non-native speaker of English is topical theme, not all non-native speakers of English use textual theme, and just a few of them useinterpersonal theme. In addition, Zig Zag pattern in thematic progression is dominantlyused then followed by reitaration theme, and the last Multiple (Split) pattern, none of the abstracts use Derived TP pattern. Most of the research article abstract section in TEFLIN abstracts in applied linguistic have fair quality, just a few included to less quality, none of them was catagorized as good and poor quality. It can be concluded that English abstracts of TEFLIN in applied linguistisc written by Indonesian speakers can be catagorized as good abstract based on their coherence.

Самоорганізаційна система виявлення концептуальних зв’язків у тестах

Запропоновано проект системи виявлення концептуальних зв’язків у текстах, що базується на використанні логіко-лінгвістичних моделей текстової інформації. У матеріалах статті проаналізовано засоби побудови змістовних зв’язків у текстових документах. Проведено паралель між створенням тематичних прогресій та мереж переходів із кінцевим числом станів. Продемонстровано недоліки роботи методу розширених мережпереходів та висвітлено переваги побудови логіко-лінгвістичних моделей речень природної мови як основного механізму функціонування самоорганізаційної системи. Виявлення концептуальних зв’язків стало можливим за рахунок зіставлення та заміни предикатних змінних і констант.

Compositional, interpersonal and representational meanings in a children's narrrative: A multimodal discourse analysis

Based mainly on Kress and van Leeuwen's social semiotic analysis and Hallidayan linguistics, this contribution attempts to employ a multimodal analysis of a picture book in order to ascertain the extent to which visual and verbal components create meaning. The textual analysis reveals a strong association between the point of departure of the clause and the story's main characters, two hares, alongside constant and linear themes. These thematic progressions clearly correspond with the visual component, as the illustrator subordinates all the visual elements to the two hares. The analysis of the visual meaning also shows that there is a predominance of narrative patterns. In addition, from an interpersonal perspective, gazes are typically the kind of offer utilized, and there is a predominance of long shots, which tend to imply objectivity and distance. However, and more in line with the philosophy of a children's narrative, the images are presented frontally and from a medium angle, which creates involvement on the part of the viewer. This interactive nature is also suggested throughout the story by the use of the imperative mood structure: “Guess how much I love you”, which gives the title of the tale. The writer and the illustrator collaborate to tell the story from two different perspectives, the visual and the verbal, with the aim of making the plot easily accessible for the young child and, in turn, keeping their attention and interest on the story being narrated.

On Narrow and Broad P-Theme Paragraphs

This paper follows in principle the paragraph typology pioneered by Mathesius (1942/1982) and Danes (1995). In this study the original paragraph types are established on a wider range of tentative criteria which include at least the relationship between the Paragraph Theme and the (FSP) themes, (i.e., the degree of in/stability of choices from the Thematic area, affecting the range of the thematic Discourse Subjects and their variability across the paragraph); the types, arrangement and hierarchy of thematic progressions; the type of thematic paradigm (the cohesive ties and means involved in thematic units); the role assigned to thematic progressions and cohesive links (their incidence); and the placement and characteristics of the Paragraph Theme exponents. Furthermore, the paper posits a decisive opposition between the two paragraph supratypes – viz. narrow and broad Paragraph Theme ones. These two major types of paragraphs represent two opposite ends of a relatively continuous cline and epitomize two radically different configurations of features following from the above criteria. The choice between the two constructional patterns, however, is determined primarily by the author's intent, including the manner of his/her presentation of the particular content. What is more, given the recursive tendencies in the build-up of texts, the concepts of narrow vs. broad Theme may be extended to apply virtually to any level of macrotextual build-up.

Themes, Thematic Progressions, and Some Implications for Understanding Discourse

This article explores some of the confusion and sources of that confusion in the research relating parts of clauses to the communicative roles that they play. It proposes that M.A.K. Halliday's system of analyzing a sentence into one or more of three possible kinds of themes and a rheme is a useful system in which the research relating parts of clauses to their communicative roles can be carried out. The article examines and briefly critiques Halliday's system of analysis and then goes on to compare some of Halliday's terms with those used in other systems. The article concludes by discussing some implications that this system might have for understanding aspects of discourse production, structure, or reception.