The relevance of Theme in the textual organization of BBC news reports

Abstract

This paper reports some preliminary results from an ongoing analysis of the relevance of clause initial position, especially ideational Theme, in the textual organization of discourse. The analysis involved a quantitative and qualitative exploration of the types and functions of Themes appearing in the News section of the Lancaster Spoken English Corpus (henceforth SEC). The thesis presented here is a humble one: within the context of BBC news reports, thematic choices affect the structure and development of both clauses and natural texts. The paper will show that speakers’ selection of either unmarked, marked or ‘special’ Themes is a context-dependent meaningful choice: it prompts clauses that satisfy different discourse needs.