We've already seen for example the way in which Helena's narrative was framed. Since Tutu is using it to exemplify one of his arguments, he carefully scaffolds the transition from his exposition:
The South Africa Broadcasting Corporation's radio team covering the Truth and Reconciliation Commission received a letter from a woman calling herself Helena (she wanted to remain anonymous for fear of reprisals) who lived in the eastern province of Mpumalanga. They broadcast substantial extracts
Tutu uses names of discourse (letter, extract) to build the bridge. Then Helena takes over and names her genre (my story begins), setting up our expectations about the kind of letter we're about to read. And Helena explicitly brings her story to a close, announcing she will end with a few lines from her wasted vulture.
The terms letter, extract, story, lines and end could be described as 'metadiscourse', since they refer to discourse as a thing (letter, extract, story, line), and as a process (end). Vocabulary of this kind is one important resource for packaging discourse. For Helena's narrative it frames the beginning and end of her story by naming them, and manages the relationship between her story and Tutu's exposition.
Halliday, Pike and others have used the metaphor of waves to describe this kind of information flow.
[1] To be clear, the only instances above that might be termed 'metadiscourse' are:
- my story begins
- I end with a few lines
because they satisfy the definition of metadiscourse as discourse about discourse. In SFL Theory, clause elements that are termed 'metadiscourse' in other theories include comment Adjuncts (to be clear), modal Adjuncts (perhaps), and conjunctive Adjuncts (nevertheless). In contrast, the elements letter, extract, story, lines — types of semiotic object (Halliday & Matthiessen 1999: 192) — do not constitute instances of metadiscourse because they are not comments on the content of the text.
[2] This is misleading, because it is untrue. To be clear, Halliday has not used the metaphor of waves to describe the packaging of discourse using vocabulary — of any kind. Instead, Halliday uses the term 'wave' to characterise grammatical structures that realise selections in the textual systems of THEME and INFORMATION. Halliday (1985: 169):
The textual meaning of the clause is expressed by what is put first (the Theme); by what is phonologically prominent (and tends to be put last – the New, signalled by information focus); and by conjunctions and relatives which if present must occur in initial position. Thus it forms a wave-like pattern of periodicity that is set up by peaks of prominence and boundary markers.
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