An Investigation into the System of Theme and Rheme in Electronic

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
. 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 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.
• 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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