An investigation into the system of theme and rheme in electronic news headlines the case of BBC news headlines = Cấu trúc đề thuyết trong tiêu đề báo điện tử -.PDF

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY
UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES
POST-GRADUATE DEPARTMENT
----------------

An Investigation into the System of Theme and Rheme in Electronic
News Headlines:
the Case of BBC News Headlines

MA MINOR THESIS

Field: English Linguistics
Code: 06.22.15

, 2011
VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY


UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES
POST-GRADUATE DEPARTMENT
----------------

An Investigation into the System of Theme and Rheme in Electronic
News Headlines:
the Case of BBC News Headlines

MA MINOR THESIS

Field: English Linguistics
Code: 06.22.15
, M.A.

, 2011


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TABLE OF CONTENTS
CIRTIFICATE OF ORGINALITY OF STUDY PROJECT REPORT.............................. i
ACKNOWLEDGMENT .................................................................................................... ii
ABSTRACT........................................................................................................................ iii
LIST OF ABBREVIATION ............................................................................................... iv
FIGURES AND TABLES .................................................................................................. v
TABLE OF CONTENT ...................................................................................................... vi

INTRODUCTION ............................................................................................................ 1
1. Rationale ......................................................................................................................... 1
2. Scope of the study ........................................................................................................... 1
3. Aims of the study ............................................................................................................ 2
4. Methodology ................................................................................................................... 2
5. Design of the study ......................................................................................................... 3

DEVELOPMENT ............................................................................................................. 4
CHAPTER 1: REVIEW OF LITERATURE ...................................................................... 4
1.1 Headlines ...................................................................................................................... 6
1.1.1 Definition of press headlines ..................................................................................... 6
1.1.2 Surface structural categorization of headlines ........................................................... 6
1.1.2.1 Plain Headlines ....................................................................................................... 6
1.1.2.2 Speech as Headlines................................................................................................ 7
1.1.2.3 Headlines with Pointer ............................................................................................ 7
1.1.2.4 Question as Headlines ............................................................................................. 7

1.2 Theme-Rheme structure ................................................................................................ 7
1.2.1 The notion of Theme ................................................................................................. 7
1.2.1.1 Marked and unmarked themes ................................................................................ 8
1.2.1.2 Theme in declarative clauses .................................................................................. 9
1.2.1.3 Theme in non-declarative clauses ........................................................................... 13


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1.2.1.4 The predicated theme .............................................................................................. 14
1.2.1.5 Theme in clause complexes .................................................................................... 14
1.2.1.6 Theme in Bound, Minor, and Elliptical Clauses ..................................................... 14
1.2.2 The notion of Rheme ................................................................................................. 16
1.3 Transitivity system ........................................................................................................ 17
CHAPTER 2: BBC NEWS HEADLINES ANALYSED IN THE LIGHT OF THEMATIC
STRUCTURE ..................................................................................................................... 20
2.1 The surface structure of BBC news headlines .............................................................. 20
2.2 Analysis in terms of Thematic structure ....................................................................... 20
2.2.1 Markedness of Theme ................................................................................................ 29
2.2.2 The selection of Theme in the corpus ........................................................................ 31
2.2.3 Experiential Theme .................................................................................................... 32
2.2.3.1 Participant as Theme ............................................................................................... 33
2.2.3.2 Process as Theme .................................................................................................... 34
2.2.3.3 Circumstance as Theme .......................................................................................... 35
2.2.4 Functions of Rheme in the corpus ............................................................................. 36
2.2.4.1 Process in Rheme Position...................................................................................... 36
2.2.4.2 Participant in Rheme Position................................................................................. 37
2.2.4.3 Circumstance in Rheme Position ............................................................................ 38

CONCLUSION ................................................................................................................. 40

1. Sumary of the findings .................................................................................................... 40
2. Concluding remarks ........................................................................................................ 41
3. Limitations and suggestions for further study ................................................................ 41
REFERENCES……………………………………………………………………………43
APPENDICES…………………………………………………………………………….I
APPENDIX I: BBC NEWS HEADLINES IN TERMS OF THEME AND RHEME
APPENDIX II: THEME ANALYSIS
APPENDIX III: THEME-RHEME AND TRANSITIVITY


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SUMMARY OF THE THESIS

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 '.


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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


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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
Theme-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
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.


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 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


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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


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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


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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


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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.