Misinterpreting Theme And New

Martin (1992: 452):

The main contrast is in the range of meanings woven through Theme and New.  Only a few of the text's participants and processes are selected as unmarked topical Theme, with far greater variation in New.  The Themes focus on the major participants involved in the anecdote, while the News tell the story.  Putting this in more general terms, Themes angle in on a given field, reflecting a text's genre; News elaborate the field, developing it in experiential terms.  This contrast in functions operates across text types …

Blogger Comments:

[1] None of the text's processes are selected as topical Theme — unmarked or otherwise; see the Theme analysis below.  The reason for the greater variation in New information than unmarked topical Themes is that, in these declarative clauses, the unmarked topical Theme is restricted to the Subject, whereas any information at all can be highlighted as New, including the unmarked topical Theme/Subject.

[2] This unsupported assertion is manifestly untrue.  Both Themes and News textually highlight the major participants in the anecdote — and more besides; see the Theme analysis below, in which the focus of New information is highlighted as green when also thematic and blue otherwise.

[3] This unsupported assertion also is manifestly untrue. The speaker tells the story; the News are information that the speaker presents as non-recoverable to the listener. Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 118):

We can now see more clearly what the terms Given and New actually mean. The significant variable is: information that is presented by the speaker as recoverable (Given) or not recoverable (New) to the listener. … what is treated as non-recoverable may be something that has not been mentioned; but it may be something unexpected, whether previously mentioned or not. The meaning is: attend to this; this is news. One form of ‘newness’ that is frequent in dialogue is contrastive emphasis…

[4] Unmarked topical Themes present the experiential wording that is to be the point of departure for the clause as message.  In declarative clauses, as in the text under discussion, these also present the Subject, the carrier of modal responsibility, as the point of departure.

Field, in contrast, is the ideational dimension of context (the culture as a semiotic system that is realised in language).  Martin's misunderstanding of the SFL notion of field is twofold.  On the one hand, he misconstrues context as register, and so misconstrues field as a dimension of register.  On the other hand, he misconstrues some ideational semantics ('activity sequences') as field, and thus as context misconstrued as register.

Genre, in the sense of text type, is modelled in SFL as register: the sub-potential of language that realises a sub-potential of context (situation type).  Register is a point of variation on the cline of instantiation.  Martin, on the other hand, models genre as a more abstract level of context than his register.

[5] This assertion also is manifestly untrue. News do not "elaborate the field". Elaborating the meanings that realise field is effected through logical structures and conjunctive cohesion.  News present the speaker's take on what is unrecoverable to the listener.

[6] The contrast in functions of Theme and New does operate across text types, but not the functions Martin attributes to them.  Misleadingly, Martin presents Theme and New as if they always highlighted different portions of messages, whereas, in fact, the conflation of Theme with New is an important textual resource.  In the text under discussion, the conflation of Theme with New occurs 9 times (out of 44).

Theme			Rheme
textual	interpersonal	topical
		the only real accident that I’ve ever had	was in fog and ice
and		there	was a big truck parked on the side of the road about three feet away from the side of the road
and		it	was very thick fog
and		a mini	had gone into this truck
well		the mini	had just touched the offside of the truck with its nearside wing
and so		it	meant [[[when I came along || my side of the road was completely blocked]]]
and	unfortunately	I	went into a four wheel skid
			before coming up to this mini
and		at that time	I didn’t know
		how	to deal with a four wheel skid
and so		I	went into the mini
		you	hit it sideways on
		about twelve cars	went into me
and then		a friend of ours	came along
and		he	decided
			to try and overtake the lot
and so		he	went into each one
			sort of banging them sideways as it were
and oh		this	was in daylight
			because of the fog
	needless to say	I	treat fog with great respect now
yes		I	know
		they	keep happening these multiple collisions in fog
	were	you	all right though as a result of this
(oh yes)
(oh yes)
		there	was no-one injured