An Investigation into the System of Theme and Rheme in Electronic

The findings of the study indicate that of all the themes, English news headlines tend to employ the simple themes so as to make the reader understand easily.. As there has been relative

An Investigation into the System of Theme and Rheme in Electronic

Nguyễn Thị Nguyệt Minh

University of Languages and International Studies M.A Thesis English Linguistics, Code: 60 22 15 Supervisor : M.A Nguyễn Hương Giang

Year of graduation: 2011

Abstract: This study in Functional Grammar attempts to investigate the way

thematic structure is presented in newspaper headlines To set out the theoretical framework for analysis, theme/rheme theories by different linguists are consulted and the Systemic Functional Grammar of M.A.K Halliday is especially focused

on The paper presents the results of a descriptive qualitative research conducted basing on 18-day corpus of the headlines taken from the world famous website http://www.bbc.co.uk The findings of the study indicate that of all the themes, English news headlines tend to employ the simple themes so as to make the reader understand easily The majority of themes in news headlines are unmarked themes, which is because of the consideration of drawing readers’attention to the content Among three elements which form the experiential part of a theme, participant appears most, circumstance the second and process the last Process as experiential element is always used to appeal while participant and circumstance are used to state Their different roles decide their different distributions

Keywords: Ngôn ngữ học; Tiếng Anh; Tiêu đề; Báo điện tử

Content

INTRODUCTION

1 Rationale

Newspapers is generally said to have more readers than any other kinds of written text In the newspaper, it is the headlines that have the highest readership "A headline describes the essence of a complicated news story in a few words It informs quickly and accurately and arouses the reader's curiosity." (Ungerer, 2000:48) News headlines are particularly important for the way readers comprehend a news text, they are markers that monitor attention, perception and the reading process Since the initial place has an enormous importance in a clause, the choice of what comes first in the headlines is crucial Whatever is chosen to be in the first place will influence a reader’s interpretation of everything that comes next Accordingly, what is considered the most important information will be realized by its place in the thematic position Since headline has a very specific thematic function: it usually expresses the most important topic of the news

item, this paper attempts to investigate how the news headline as a clause organized in the light of theme and rheme perspective It will not only describe the type and element

of the thematic structure, but also try to explain and interpret the implication of the use of such a thematic structure in news headlines related to its particular characteristics

Of all news websites, BBC seems to be the Britain's most popular online news destination, the biggest news site in terms of hits - in the world, and in the top ten biggest sites in the world On the ground that it can represent the news in any aspects (news on BBC covers a wide range of fields namely politics, economy, culture and science), news headlines taken from this website are objects of the study Hence, the writer titles this research 'An Investigation into the System of Theme and Rheme in Electronic News Headlines: the Case of BBC News Headlines '

2 Scope of the study

Since accessing to the hard copies of BBC newspapers was not possible, the internet editions of the papers were selected This research will be focused on the analysis of 516 news headlines which are taken from website www.bbc.co.uk in edition of July 12th to July 30, 2011 The writer takes the underlying theories which are used to analyze the data from a theory of Clause as Message by Halliday (1994)

Particularly, the major focus of analysis in this study is Theme, as its realization is easier

to illustrate, although in the analysis, Rheme content will also be examined to some extent

3 Aims of the study

This study aims at shedding a light on the use of theme in contemporary news headlines

As there has been relatively little research into use of theme in news headlines, this study attempts to fill this gap in the literature on thematic structure More importantly, this study is an attempt to contribute to a broader framework for the investigation of theme According to Brown (2000:4), to understand complex issues, asking the right questions is more valuable than “possessing storehouses of knowledge”, so in this light, 3 key research questions addressed in this thesis are:

• How is Theme-Rheme structure realized in BBC news headlines?

• What are the functions of theme in the headlines?

• What factors govern the theme choice of the press headlines?

4 Methodology

4.1 Type of the Study

The type of research applied in this research is descriptive Descriptive research is used to analyze the parts of the clause based on thematic structure

In addition, in this research, the writer uses quantitative analysis, in that things are counted It is, however, not merely a statistical analysis; the quantitative data is used as a

basis for interpretation The study is based on the theory of systemic functional grammar developed by Halliday, particularly on the notions of Rheme, within Theme-Rheme and on notions of transitivity

4.2 Object of the Study

The corpus for this study consisted of 516 headlines from http://www.bbc.co.uk from July 12th to July 30th 2011 which were selected and analyzed in the light of systemic functional grammar approach They provide biggest information such as phone hacking related to Rupert Murdoch, Somalia drought and Preah Vihear temple' issues, etc

4.3 Corpus processing: techniques for extracting the data

According to Eggins (1994:284), theme analysis is best undertaken after analysing the clause for its transitivity system Therefore, besides textual meaning, the author also carried out the analysis of another strand of meaning, the experiential meaning, realized through the analysis of transitivity However, as already stated, this study will focus only

on the realization of the textual meaning

The study presents the analysis of the headlines from thematic structure at a clause level-micro level The methods of data collection in this study that the writer uses are the documentation and observation technique It is the technique in getting the data about the case or available note, transcription, book, magazine and newspaper The writer collects the news headlines of BBC online published in July 2011 The techniques used in observing data are:

• Reading and identifying headline news of BBC online

• Arranging the headlines news based on the edition series

• Arranging the headlines news based on thematic structure and surface structure

5 Design of the study

The study consists of three main parts They are

Introduction: the first main part of the research provides information about the reasons for the topic, the aims of the research, the methods to use in the research and organization

of writing

Development: This is the main part of the thesis, which includes two chapters

Chapter 1, Review of Literature consists of previous studies, the researches that have almost similar to the data analysis and the theories in doing the research, i.e theory of theme-rheme structure and theoretical concepts of news headlines

Chapter 2, Them-rheme Analysis of BBC news headlines presents finding results and discussion

Conclusion: This part summarizes the analysis and discussion done in previous parts of the paper It also provides the limitations of the study and suggestions for further studies Apart from the 4 main parts, appendices are also included Appendix I is the full analysis

of theme in terms of markedness and multiple/simple theme and theme as transitivity role Appendix II offers analysis of theme choice as participant, process and circumstance The thematic structure and transitivity are presented in Appendix III

REVIEW OF LITERATURE

1.1 Headlines

1.1.1 Definition of press headlines

1.1.2 Surface structural categorization of headlines

1.1.2.1 Plain Headlines

1.1.2.2 Speech as Headlines

1.1.2.3 Headlines with Pointer

1.1.2.4 Question as Headlines

1.2 Theme-Rheme structure

1.2.1 The notion of Theme

1.2.1.1 Marked and unmarked themes

1.2.1.2 Theme in declarative clauses

1.2.1.3 Theme in non-declarative clauses

1.2.1.4 The predicated theme

1.2.1.5 Theme in clause complexes

1.2.1.6 Theme in Bound, Minor, and Elliptical Clauses

1.2.2 The notion of Rheme

1.3 Transitivity system

SUMMARY OF THE FINDINGS

The previous chapter has looked closely at headlines from theme-rheme perspective including markedness, simple/multiple theme and theme-rheme in terms of transitivity role It is now worth summarizing the main findings of the analysis

The findings of the study show that of all the themes, BBC news headlines tend to employ the simple themes so as to make the reader get the information easily

The majority of themes in news headlines belong to unmarked theme (account for 83.58% of the total themes), which creates highly informative and attractive headlines for the readers

A great number of headlines start with experiential theme due to the objectivity of journalism, providing information Since interpersonal themes are not necessarily obligatory elements of theme, the rate of BBC news headlines having interpersonal themes is not significant, about 1.5 % Moreover, in headlines, there is hardly any interaction between the writer and the hearer, the interpersonal themes are not necessary

In addition, textual themes are not typically thematic in headlines because of its linking role Commonly, it is not popular to have experiential, textual and interpersonal theme in

a headline

Among three elements which form the experiential part of a theme, participant appears with most frequency (91.8%) followed by circumstance (6.81%), then process (1.39%) While participant and circumstance are used to state, process as experiential element is always used to appeal Their different roles decide their different distributions

Typical themes in the news headlines are participants involved in material, relational and verbal processes Actors are thematized much more than any other participants This is

clearly attributed to genre and the writer's purpose, which is to inform people about events The high proportion of sayer and verbal processes in the themes is because of the fact that a good deal of news is about what people say about the events

Finally, the total headlines, thus, answer the well-known questions: what happens, where

it happens, to whom it happens, who did it, what the results are, and in what context it happens

CONCLUDING REMARKS

In this study, what I have been trying to do is to apply systemic functional grammar approach, particularly system of theme and rheme in analysing English press headlines

In order to have this analysis, I have consulted theories related to thematic structure from different theorists, and I have chosen the one by Halliday to base my study on In details, throughout this study, theme choices have been analyzed in terms of their experiential, interpersonal, and textual role, along with their grammatical functions The different functions of the theme and the rheme of the clause have also been revealed: elements which have more orienting role in a headline will often be placed in theme, while elements which have a focal role (e.g spatial location references which form part of a description of events in a narrative) will appear in the rheme

From the research and through the above discussion, it has been shown that choice of theme appears to be a key factor for the success of clause in general and headline in particular In relation to the general question of the function that theme performs in press headlines, one function of theme which is seen is the organisation of the message

Importantly, it can be concluded that theme choice is governed by the combined forces of the following concerns: writer's and reader's roles (e.g informational vs interactional) and grammatical constraints (e.g on word order)

Finally, from the analysis, the view on thematic structure that different themes (different types of information in thematic position, realized as different constituents of the clause) create different contexts for the message in the clause and the different expectations in the reader or hearer, is absolutely confirmed

3 Limitations and suggestions

Basically, the different views on theme are divided into four categories: Theme as topic, Theme as given or known, Theme as having the least degree of communicative dynamism, and Theme as message onset This study; however, could not cover all of those due to the limitation of time and limited number of pages, it only focuses on the last mentioned category, theme as message onset

This thesis attempts to investigate the system of theme and rheme in news headlines, so many aspects have been mentioned like the markedness, simple theme as well as the multiple theme, the theme and rheme together with transitivity system However, the object of this thesis realised by simple or complex clauses is at micro level, another

aspect of theme-rheme structure, thematic progression is not discussed in the thesis since thematic progression is only realised by text at macro level

For further studies, to analyse thematic structure comprehensively, the object of study could be converted to text, that is news including headlines and news itself Moreover, news could be seen on different views on theme: Theme as topic, Theme as given or known, Theme as having the least degree of communicative dynamism, and Theme as message onset

3 Limitations and suggestions

Basically, the different views on theme are divided into four categories: Theme as topic, Theme as given or known, Theme as having the least degree of communicative dynamism, and Theme as message onset This study; however, could not cover all of those due to the limitation of time and limited number of pages, it only focuses on the last mentioned category, theme as message onset

This thesis attempts to investigate the system of theme and rheme in news headlines, so many aspects have been mentioned like the markedness, simple theme as well as the multiple theme, the theme and rheme together with transitivity system However, the object of this thesis realised by simple or complex clauses is at micro level, another aspect of theme-rheme structure, thematic progression is not discussed in the thesis since thematic progression is only realised by text at macro level

For further studies, to analyse thematic structure comprehensively, the object of study could be converted to text, that is news including headlines and news itself Moreover, news could be seen on different views on theme: Theme as topic, Theme as given or known, Theme as having the least degree of communicative dynamism, and Theme as message onset

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