A GENERAL OVERVIEW BASED ON THE HALLIDAYAN 5.

1
APPROACH TO INFORMATION FLOW

Thematic structure: theme and rheme .5.1.1

One way of explaining the interactional organization of sentences is to suggest
.that a clause consists of two segments

.The first segment is called the theme )1

.The theme is what the clause is about

At clause level, a speaker announces the topic of his/her message by thematizing it,
.that is, by putting it in initial position
:EX

.The second segment of a clause is called the rheme )2

The rheme is what the speaker says about the theme. It is the goal of discourse. As
such, it is the most important element in the structure of the clause as a message
because it represents the very information that the speaker wants to convey to the
.hearer. It is the rheme that fulfils the communicative purpose of the utterance

:EX

This basically means that every clause has the structure of a message: it says
.something (the rheme) about something (the theme)

Thematic structure: grammaticality vs acceptability 5.1.1.1

The notions of theme and rheme can be used to account for the acceptability (rather
.than grammaticality) of a given sequence in a given context

In context, grammaticality does not necessarily ensure acceptability or coherence. For

example, the following text is well-formed grammatically, but is ill-formed in terms
:of its thematics

:EX
:EX

Unlike the above constructed text, the following is an authentic advertisement for
.Mazda cars (most likely a translation of an Italian text)

What inspired that rebellious young poet called Rimbaud? What drove him to reach ((
into the innermost part of his soul in search of the undiscovered? It allowed him to
take words that already existed and yet express himself in a completely new way.
Some creators are brave enough to realize their dreams without compromise. It is men
like this who created the MX-5 in 1989. By ignoring the rules they are constantly
reshaping the future. Even now they are realizing a new dream. They work for
)).Mazda
The Mazda text has the same feel of awkwardness and lack of orientation
about it as Halliday’s constructed example. To start with, none of the themes
seem to link in with a previous theme or rheme; each sentence seems to stand
.on its own. Not one sentence is coordinated with the other

Thematic structure: text organization and development 5.1.1.2

In this area, a great deal of emphasis has traditionally been placed on theme rather
than on rheme. By definition, theme represents the speaker’s/writer’s point of
departure in each clause, which suggests that its organizational role is more important
.than that of rheme

:EX

Attempting to analyze verb-initial languages such as Arabic in terms of Halliday’s

model highlights the fact that, for some languages, this type of analysis may not be as
workable as it is in English. But whatever its status in other languages, exploring the
thematic analysis of English is useful in illuminating certain areas of discourse
.organization
It seems to me that at this level of textual analysis, translators generally
:face three main possibilities
You may find that you can preserve the thematic patterning of the original without )a(
distorting the target text. If the elements placed in theme position in the source text
can easily and naturally be placed in theme position in the target text, the method of
.development of the two texts will be the same or very similar
You may find that you cannot preserve the thematic patterning of the original )b(
without distorting the target text. There are many factors which can restrict the choice
and ordering of themes in translation. These factors may be grammatical; for instance
it is ungrammatical to put verbs in theme position in English, though not in Arabic or
You may find that Halliday’s model of thematic analysis does not apply to your )c(
.language at all or does not apply to some of its sentence patterns

Thematic structure: marked vs unmarked sequences 5.1.1.3