Text-level themes: A cognitive psychological perspective
| Autor: | Alvin Leong Ping |
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| Rok vydání: | 1999 |
| Předmět: | |
| Zdroj: | Text - Interdisciplinary Journal for the Study of Discourse. 19 |
| ISSN: | 1613-4117 0165-4888 |
| DOI: | 10.1515/text.1.1999.19.1.25 |
| Popis: | This paper extends the application of the inference-boundary (IB) model-a clause-level, cognitive psychological model of theme and rheme (Leong, to appear)-at the level of the text and how it facilitates a characterization of text-level themes by way of thematic prominence and their functional role in the text. The IB model lays emphasis on theme as a position-bound, initial element that activates a boundary of acceptability within which it is possible for the rheme to occur. Shaped by context, the knowledge structures of the language user, and inferential activities, the boundary of acceptability constrains how the message may proceed, given an initial element. In terms of thematic prominence, and drawing on the work of Tadros (1985, 1994), a text-level theme may be classified as a thematic pre-head, head, or post-head. In functional terms, seven categories are proposed, namely, setting, hypotheticality, report, question, instruction, summary, and scenario. The findings of an exploratory corpus-based study indicate that the functional categories of text-level themes have varying degrees of thematic prominence and that certain categories are more widely used than others. |
| Databáze: | OpenAIRE |
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