The Argument For MacroTheme And MacroNew [1]

Martin & Rose (2007: 197):

In many written texts, waves of Theme and New extend well beyond clauses and paragraphs to much larger phases of discourse. We have already introduced the higher level Theme and New introducing and closing Helena’s narrative, and the still higher level Theme linking Tutu’s exposition to her story. Beyond this we know that Tutu’s exposition was itself introduced with an even higher level Theme: his question about the cost of justice. So Helena’s description of her husband’s anguish is just a wave of ripples in a more expansive hierarchy:

We can refer to higher level Themes predicting hyperThemes as macro-Themes, and higher level News distilling hyperNews as macroNews.

Blogger Comments:

[1] To be clear, in SFL Theory, Theme is the peak of textual prominence in a clause, and New is the peak of prominence in an information unit. These two waves thus extend through an entire text.

[2] As previously explained, these higher level Themes and New — hyperTheme (topic sentence) and hyperNew (paragraph summary) — are principles of writing pedagogy, not linguistic theory.

[3] As previously explained, Themes do not predict what follows, they provide a textually relevant point of departure for what follows. In the quoted text, it can be seen that the macro-Theme (the first instance of bolded text) does not predict any of the lower level Themes (bolded) that follow.

[4] As previously explained, News do not distil what precedes, they are the textually highlighting of information as new. In the quoted text, it can be seen that the macro-New — I end with a few lines… — does not distil anything that has preceded, let alone the preceding lower level News, none of which are identified in the text by Martin & Rose.

Misconstruing Logico-Semantic Elaboration As Textual 'Prediction' And 'Distillation'

Martin & Rose (2007: 196-7):

The following examples of history writing display a similar kind of sandwich structure, with hyperThemes predicting what’s to come, and hyperNews distilling what’s been said (the ‘you tell them what you’re going to say, say it, and tell them what you’ve said’ rhetoric noted above). For both of these texts note just how precisely the hyperTheme predicts the pattern of Themes which follow (underlined), and the hyperNew consolidates the pattern of News which precede it:

The Second World War further encouraged the restructuring of the Australian economy towards a manufacturing basis.

Between 1937 and 1945 the value of industrial production almost doubled. This increase was faster than otherwise would have occurred. The momentum was maintained in the post-war years and by 1954-5 the value of manufacturing output was three times that of 1944-5. The enlargement of Australia's steel-makinq capacity, and of chemicals, rubber, metal goods and motor vehicles all owed something to the demands of war.

The war had acted as something of a hot-house for technological progress and economic change.

For one thousand years, whales have been of commercial interest for meat, oil, meal and whalebone.

About 1000 A.D., whaling started with the Basques using sailing vessels and row boats. They concentrated on the slow-moving Right whales. As whaling spread to other countries, whaling shifted to Humpbacks, Greys, Sperms and Bowheads. By 1500, they were whaling off Greenland; by the 1700s, off Atlantic America; and by the 1800s, in the south Pacific, Antarctic and Bering Sea. Early in this century, the Norwegians introduced explosive harpoons, fired from guns on catcher boats, and whaling shifted to the larger and faster baleen whales. The introduction of factory ships by Japan and the USSR intensified whaling still further.

The global picture, then, was a mining operation moving progressively with increasing efficiency to new species and new areas. Whaling reached a peak during the present century.

Both hyperNews include evaluative metaphors, a not untypical feature of higher level News in writing of this kind. Patterns of clause Themes have been described as constructing a text’s ‘method of development’; patterns of News establish its ‘point’ (Fries 1981).

Blogger Comments:

[1] To be clear, the topic sentences (hyperThemes) in these two texts do not predict 'what's to come'. The reader is invited to predict 'what's to come' only on the basis of the topic sentences, without the benefit of hindsight. What is true is that the bodies of these two texts elaborate the meaning of their respective topic sentences, the first through exemplification, the second through exposition. Martin & Rose here mistake logico-semantic relations in textual transitions for textual statuses.

[2] To be clear, the relation of the paragraph summaries (hyperNews) to the bodies of their respective texts is elaboration through summation. Martin & Rose here again mistake logico-semantic relations in textual transitions for textual status.

[3] To be clear, misanalyses of Theme are marked in red. Those that are underlined are Subjects that have been displaced from Theme by Adjuncts (marked Themes), and so feature in the Rheme, not Theme. Those that are not underlined are Themes that Martin & Rose missed in their analysis.

[4] To be clear, the pattern of New information is not indicated. As previously demonstrated, Martin & Rose mistake Rheme for New information. New information can occur in both Theme or Rheme, or neither.

[5] This is true. It was Fries (1981), not Martin (1992), who first theorised 'method of development' and 'point'. In SFL Theory, these are now seen as logogenetic patterns of instantiation.

Misrepresenting Halliday On New Information

Martin & Rose (2007: 192):

For Halliday there are two overlapping waves involved: a thematic wave with a crest at the beginning of the clause, and a news wave with a crest at the end (where the main pitch movement would be if the clause were read aloud). In this phase, participant identification links the unmarked Themes together, and patterns of negative appraisal link up choices for New. Recurrent choices for Theme and related choices for New work together to package discourse as phases of information.

Blogger Comments:

This is misleading, because it is untrue. For Halliday, a Theme is a peak of prominence at the beginning of a clause, whereas the focus of New information is a peak of prominence at either the beginning or end of an information unit. An information unit may be co-extensive with a clause, or extend over part of a clause or extend beyond a single clause. In short, the focus of New information can occur anywhere, or nowhere, in a clause.

Misanalysing Information Flow

Martin & Rose (2007: 192-3):

An outline of information flow at this level of analysis is provided in Table 6.1.

 

Blogger Comments:

The table below presents a Theme analysis that is line with SFL Theory, and presents one of several possible interpretations of the distribution of Given and New information in this portion of text. Each focus of New information, realised phonologically by tonic prominence, is highlighted as bold, and the extent of New information, coloured blue, is taken to be the element of clause structure in which focus of New appears.

Theme				Rheme
structural	interpersonal	topical
		marked	unmarked
		After about three years with the special forces		our hell began
			He	became very quiet, withdrawn
	Sometimes		he	would just press his face into his hands
and				shake uncontrollably
			I	realised
			he	was drinking too much
Instead of				resting at night
			he	would wander from window to window
			He	tried to hide his wild consuming fear
but			I	saw it
		In the early hours of the morning between two and half-past-two		I jolt awake from his rushed breathing
				Rolls this way, that side of the bed
			He	's pale, ice cold in a sweltering night — sopping wet with sweat
Eyes bewildered, but dull like the dead
And the shakes: The terrible convulsions and blood-curdling shrieks of fear and pain from the bottom of his soul
	Sometimes		he	sits motionless
	just			staring in front of him

The important foci of New overlooked by Martin & Rose are those in the marked Themes, and those that mark contrasts: resting vs wander and hide (vs saw). Many other readings are possible; for example, either or both instances of the interpersonal Theme sometimes could be realised with tonic prominence, marking them as the foci of New information.

Mistaking Rheme For New Information

Martin & Rose (2007: 192):

At the other end of the clause in writing we typically have what Halliday calls New. This is a different kind of textual prominence having to do with the information we are expanding upon as text unfolds. In the phase of discourse we are concentrating on here, the News have to do with how Helena's husband felt and so the dominant pattern has to do with negative appraisal (depressed mental states and strange behaviour). Note how the choices for New are much more varied than the choices for unmarked Theme.They elaborate with human human interest, whereas choices for unmarked Theme tend to fix our gaze.

Blogger Comments:

[1] To be clear, this confuses Rheme with New. On the one hand, Rheme is the element of clause structure in which the Theme is developed (Halliday & Matthiessen 2014: 89). On the other hand, New is not an element of clause structure, but an element of the structure of an information unit, which can

• be co-extensive with a clause,
• extend over a portion of a clause, or
• extend further than a clause.

Moreover, New information can occur in either the Theme or the Rheme of a clause; that is, New is not restricted to the Rheme. Examples of the conflation of New with Theme in Martin & Rose's data include the marked Themes. Each of these is punctuated graphologically by a comma, which marks the extent of the Theme as an information unit, which obligatorily includes a focus of New information. Given that the marked Themes in Helena's texts are restricted to circumstances of temporal Location which introduce each new time-phase in her autobiography, it is not surprising that each of these marked Themes presents the temporal Location as New information.

[2] It will be seen in the next post that Martin & Rose's analysis of New information (and unmarked Theme) is markedly different from an analysis based on SFL principles — not only because New is ignored when thematic.

Misanalysing Theme

Martin & Rose (2007: 191):

All the Themes are highlighted, and the marked Themes are underlined below:

He became very quiet.
[He became] Withdrawn.
Sometimes he would just press his face into his hands
and [he would] shake uncontrollably.
I realised
he was drinking too much.
Instead of resting at night, he would wander from window to window.
He tried to hide his wild consuming fear,
but I saw it.
In the early hours of the morning between two and half-past-two, I jolt awake from his rushed breathing.
[He] Rolls this way, that side of the bed.
He's pale.
[He's] ice cold in a sweltering night
[He's] — sopping wet with sweat.
[His] Eyes [are] bewildered,
but [his eyes are] dull like the dead.
And [he had] the shakes.
[He had] The terrible convulsions and blood-curdling shrieks of fear and pain from the bottom of his soul.
Sometimes he sits motionless,
just staring in front of him.

The main recurrent choice for Subject/Theme in this phase is Helena's husband, realised as he. This identity gives us our basic orientation to the field for this phase of discourse; Helena's husband is the hook round which she spins the new information she gives us in each figure. As the Theme of each clause, he is our recurrent point of departure, our angle on the field in each figure. These kinds of Subject/Themes give continuity to a phase of discourse. Because they are the most frequent kind of Theme in discourse, listeners/readers perceive them as 'unmarked' Themes; they are mildly prominent in the flow of discourse, because they are the point of departure for each clause, but because they are typical they are not especially prominent.

Blogger Comments:

[1] To be clear, as previously explained, Martin & Rose misrepresent the data by inserting Themes that the author chose not to instantiate. That is, Martin & Rose give higher textual status (Theme) to elements that the author ellipsed in order to give them lower textual status. Moreover, Martin & Rose mistake the Subjects of clauses with marked Themes for (unmarked) Themes, as previously explained. A thematic analysis that is consistent with SFL Theory is presented below for comparison.

Theme				Rheme
structural	interpersonal	topical
		marked	unmarked
			He	became very quiet, withdrawn
	Sometimes		he	would just press his face into his hands
and				shake uncontrollably
			I	realised
			he	was drinking too much
Instead of				resting at night
			he	would wander from window to window
			He	tried to hide his wild consuming fear
but			I	saw it
		In the early hours of the morning between two and half-past-two		I jolt awake from his rushed breathing
				Rolls this way, that side of the bed
			He	's pale, ice cold in a sweltering night — sopping wet with sweat
Eyes bewildered, but dull like the dead
And the shakes: The terrible convulsions and blood-curdling shrieks of fear and pain from the bottom of his soul
	Sometimes		he	sits motionless
	just			staring in front of him

[2] To be clear, in SFL Theory, 'field' refers to the ideational dimension of the culture as semiotic system; that is, 'field' refers to what is happening in terms of the culture. Martin's use of 'field' typically refers to the ideational semantics of a text, due to the fact that he misunderstands context as register, a sub-potential of language, such that field is the ideational dimension of register.

[3] To be clear, this confuses Rheme (the body of the clause as message) with New information. New information is not restricted to the Rheme of a clause, as demonstrated by every Theme realised by tonic prominence, the phonological realisation of the focus of New information. Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 652):

… thematic status may be combined with either given or new, and the same is true of rhematic status.

[4] To be clear, the figure is a unit in the ideational semantics of Halliday & Matthiessen (1999). Since the concern here is the textual metafunction, the relevant semantic unit is the message.

[5] To be clear, a Theme is not an "angle" on field (see [2]). Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 88, 89):

We may assume that in all languages the clause has the character of a message, or quantum of information in the flow of discourse: it has some form of organisation whereby it fits in with, and contributes to, the flow of discourse. …

The Theme is the element that serves as the point of departure of the message; it is that which locates and orients the clause within its context. The speaker chooses the Theme as his or her point of departure to guide the addressee in developing an interpretation of the message; by making part of the message prominent as Theme, the speaker enables the addressee to process the message.

[6] To be clear, the author's use of ellipsis — which Martin & Rose have undone (see [1]) — gives continuity to this phase of discourse. Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 635):

Ellipsis marks the textual status of continuous information within a certain grammatical structure. At the same time, the non-ellipsed elements of that structure are given the status of being contrastive in the environment of continuous information. Ellipsis thus assigns differential prominence to the elements of a structure: if they are non-prominent (continuous), they are ellipsed; if they are prominent (contrastive), they are present. The absence of elements through ellipsis is an iconic realisation of lack of prominence.

[7] To be clear, this confuses markedness with prominence and attributes a knowledge of SFL theory — the perception of unmarked Themes — to listeners/readers. All Themes are textually prominent, but marked Themes typically carry an added feature of contrast. Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 105):

When some other element comes first, it constitutes a ‘marked’ choice of Theme; such marked Themes usually either express some kind of setting for the clause or carry a feature of contrast.

Marked Themes can be 'doubly prominent' if the focus of New information falls with the Theme. Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 328):

One way of giving prominence to a Theme is to construe it as if it was a circumstance of Matter; e.g. as for the ghost, it hasn’t been seen since. By being first introduced circumstantially, the ghost becomes a focused Theme.

However, as will be seen, such focused Themes are not possible in the periodicity model of Martin & Rose, since it is falsely assumed that New information always falls within the Rheme of a clause.

Periodicity

Martin & Rose (2007: 187):

Periodicity is concerned with information flow — with the way in which meanings are packaged to make it easier to take them in.

Following a general introduction, section 6.2 looks at information flow in clauses, introducing the concepts of Theme and New. Section 6.3 pushes this up a level to paragraphs, considering how information can be predicted by a hyperTheme (aka topic sentence) and summarised as hyperNew. Then in section 6.4 extensions of this patterning in longer carefully edited texts are explored (macroTheme and macroNew).

Blogger Comments:

[1] To be clear, in Martin (1992: 392-3), the concepts described in this chapter are modelled as types of interaction pattern, described as a 'systematic interaction between discoursal, grammatical and phonological structures'. For a thorough examination of that model, see the clarifying critiques here. In the present work, Martin & Rose have totally re-theorised these interaction patterns as textual systems of Martin's discourse semantic stratum, and named the systems, not 'from above', in terms of the meanings that are expressed, but 'from below' in terms of the type of structure that expresses the meaning. In a functional theory, such as SFL Theory, the view 'from above' takes priority.

[2] To be clear, the systems of theme and information assign different textual statuses to grammatical elements as a means of relating a text to its environment. Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 528): 

The “textual” metafunction is the name we give to the systematic resources a language must have for creating discourse: for ensuring that each instance of text makes contact with its environment. The “environment” includes both the context of situation and other instances of text.

[3] To be clear, Theme is an element of clause structure, but New is an element of information unit structure, not clause structure. Clause and information unit are grammatical systems, not (discourse) semantic systems. In Martin (1992: 384, 393, 401), information is misunderstood as a phonological system.

[4] To be clear, 'paragraph' is a graphological unit, and thus only applies to the written mode of language. Because spontaneous speech is not organised in paragraphs, the model does not apply to language as a whole. As will be seen, much of what is presented in this chapter is not linguistic theory, but writing pedagogy rebranded and misrepresented as linguistic theory.

[5] These are rebranded terms from writing pedagogy, misrepresented as linguistic theory:

• 'hyperTheme' is Martin's rebranding of 'topic sentence' (as acknowledged above);
• 'hyperNew' is Martin's rebranding of 'paragraph summary';
• 'macroTheme' is Martin's rebranding of 'introductory paragraph'; and
• 'macroNew' is Martin's rebranding of 'text summary'.

The inverted use of 'hyper-' and 'macro-' derives from Martin's misunderstanding of the source of the term 'hyperTheme' (Daneš 1974), where 'hyper-' means 'above', since it refers to the first instance of a repeated Theme; see Problems With The Argument For Hyper-Theme.