Ideation: Meaning Beyond The Clause

Ngo, Hood, Martin, Painter, Smith & Zappavigna (2022: 13):

In terms of meaning beyond the clause, IDEATION allows us, for example, to anticipate activity – using one figure to name what’s to come (another thing that has been really annoying in (25)) and others to spell it out:

(25)

Oh another thing that has been really annoying this summer is —

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you know when you go to a parking lot and it’s a busy place. You get in your car and you don’t necessarily want to leave immediately. Like you might want to — I might want to have Henry test his blood sugar, give the kids snacks. Or if we were at the pool, like change or look at my phone or send a text message or whatever. It drives me crazy when a car is like sitting there following you and then they just wait for you to leave.

Blogger Comments:

To be clear, in terms of IDEATION, this is not meaning beyond the clause because all the wording that follows the first em dash is embedded as the Token of a single clause.

That is, it does not use one figure to 'name what's to come' — it thematises a Value to provide the point of departure for a rhematic Token. And this suggests the discourse function of another thing that has been really annoying this summer: It has the textual function of serving as the point of departure of the message. Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 89):

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.