Misrepresenting Halliday On Theme

Ngo, Hood, Martin, Painter, Smith & Zappavigna (2022: 181-2):

As outlined by Halliday (1967, 1970a), English grammar and phonology structure textual meaning as waves of information. One peak of prominence is realised grammatically through Theme at the beginning of an English clause. It functions as the point of departure for the message by encoding an angle on the field. A complementary peak of prominence, termed New, is realised phonologically in the unmarked case through the major pitch movement on the final salient syllable of a tone group – its Tonic segment (Halliday, 1970a; Martin and Rose, [2003] 2007: 189–92). A secondary peak of informational prominence is realised through a salient syllable, which in SFL notation begins each foot. As noted in Chapter 3, Section 3.6, a salient syllable can be made super-salient where there is a significant jump in pitch, usually upwards, which does not involve a choice of tone. Super-salience is indicated via a vertical arrow, ‘↑’, before the syllable.

Blogger Comments:

[1] To be clear, the notion of the textual meaning of a clause as a wave of prominence is first set out in Halliday (1985: 169).

[2] To be clear, the Theme functions as the point of departure for the clause as 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.

Field, on the other hand, is the ideational dimension of context — two strata above lexicogrammar — which Martin (1992) misunderstands as register.

[3] To be clear, the New is peak of prominence of the information unit, which may or may not be co-extensive with the clause.

[4] This is misleading, because it credits Martin and Rose with theorising that is entirely Halliday's.

[5] To be clear, a salient syllable is a peak of phonological (rhythmic), not informational prominence. Here the authors confuse expression with content. Each salient syllable that is non-tonic realises what was not selected as the Focus of New information.