Thematic structure

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Thematic structure is a concept in linguistics. [1] When people talk, there are purposes in three separable parts of utterances, the act of speech, the propositional content and the thematic structure. Because speaking is cooperative, in order that the speaking can be effective in the conversation, speakers have to pay attention to their listeners’ knowledge, state of mind and level of understanding. Speakers can assume that listeners know or do not know what speakers are talking about.

Linguistics is the scientific study of language. It involves analysing language form, language meaning, and language in context. The earliest activities in the documentation and description of language have been attributed to the 6th-century-BC Indian grammarian Pāṇini who wrote a formal description of the Sanskrit language in his Aṣṭādhyāyī.

The term proposition has a broad use in contemporary analytic philosophy. It is used to refer to some or all of the following: the primary bearers of truth-value, the objects of belief and other "propositional attitudes", the referents of that-clauses, and the meanings of declarative sentences. Propositions are the sharable objects of attitudes and the primary bearers of truth and falsity. This stipulation rules out certain candidates for propositions, including thought- and utterance-tokens which are not sharable, and concrete events or facts, which cannot be false.

Conversation form of interactive communication between or among people

Conversation is interactive communication between two or more people.

According to Michael Halliday, the speakers’ judgements about the listeners’ current mental states are reflected in what is called the thematic structure used.

Michael Halliday Australian linguist

Michael Alexander Kirkwood Halliday was an English-born linguist who developed the internationally influential systemic functional linguistics (SFL) model of language. His grammatical descriptions go by the name of systemic functional grammar. Halliday describes language as a semiotic system, "not in the sense of a system of signs, but a systemic resource for meaning". For Halliday, language is a "meaning potential"; by extension, he defines linguistics as the study of "how people exchange meanings by 'languaging'". Halliday describes himself as a generalist, meaning that he has tried "to look at language from every possible vantage point", and has described his work as "wander[ing] the highways and byways of language". But he has claimed that "to the extent that I favoured any one angle, it was the social: language as the creature and creator of human society".

The thematic structure has three main functions:

A thematic structure is a preoccupying conception of a proposition which runs throughout a media text, usually around an initiating topic. It strategically ties together a number of more specific conception or statements on the basis of particular social forms of knowledge and social forms of perception and belief. A thematic structure helps to make a media text coherent -- it orients a text around a central theme or a strand of related themes running through a story. (reference: David Deacon(2007), Researching communications,p174)

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Public speaking process and act of speaking or giving a lecture to a group of people in a structured, deliberate manner intended to inform, influence, or entertain a listening audience

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Debate argument with formal rules, is usually used to prepare a substantive vote

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Audience group of people who participate in a show or encounter a work of art

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In social science generally and linguistics specifically, the cooperative principle describes how people achieve effective conversational communication in common social situations—that is, how listeners and speakers act cooperatively and mutually accept one another to be understood in a particular way. As phrased by Paul Grice, who introduced it in his pragmatic theory,

Make your contribution such as is required, at the stage at which it occurs, by the accepted purpose or direction of the talk exchange in which you are engaged.

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In linguistics, modality is a system of linguistic options that allows for expressing a speaker's general intentions as well as the speaker's belief as to whether the proposition expressed is true, obligatory, desirable, or actual. Modal options can be realized by word order (moods), modal auxiliaries and modal adjuncts.

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Thematic equative

In systemic functional grammar, a thematic equative is a thematic resource in which two or more separate elements in a clause are grouped together to form a single constituent of the theme-plus-rheme structure. An example of this is:

Thematic learning

Thematic teaching is the selecting and highlighting of a theme through an instructional unit or module, course, multiple courses. It is often interdisciplinary, highlighting the relationship of knowledge across academic disciplines and everyday life. Themes can be topics or take the form of overarching questions. Thematic learning is closely related to interdisciplinary or integrated instruction, topic-, project- or phenomenon-based learning. Thematic teaching is commonly associated with elementary classrooms and middle schools using a team-based approach, but this pedagogy is equally relevant in secondary schools and with adult learners. Thematic instruction assumes students learn best when they can associate new information holistically with across the entire curriculum and with their own lives, experiences, and communities.

Thematic analysis is one of the most common forms of analysis within qualitative research. It emphasizes identifying, analysing and interpreting patterns of meaning within qualitative data. Thematic analysis is often understood as a method or technique in contrast to most other qualitative analytic approaches - such as grounded theory, discourse analysis, narrative analysis and interpretative phenomenological analysis - which can be described as methodologies or theoretically informed frameworks for research. Thematic analysis is best thought of as an umbrella term for a variety of different approaches, rather than a singular method. Different versions of thematic analysis are underpinned by different philosophical and conceptual assumptions and are divergent in terms of procedure. Leading thematic analysis proponents, psychologists Virginia Braun and Victoria Clarke distinguish between three main types of thematic analysis: coding reliability approaches, code book approaches and reflexive approaches. They describe their own widely used approach first outlined in 2006 in the journal Qualitative Research in Psychology as reflexive thematic analysis. Their 2006 paper has over 59,000 Google Scholar citations and according to Google Scholar is the most cited academic paper published in 2006. The popularity of this paper exemplifies the growing interest in thematic analysis as a distinct method.

Personal narrative (PN) is a prose narrative relating personal experience usually told in first person; its content is nontraditional. "Personal" refers to a story from one's life or experiences. "Nontraditional" refers to literature that does not fit the typical criteria of a narrative.

References

  1. Roca, I. M. (1992). Thematic Structure: Its Role in Grammar. Walter de Gruyter. ISBN   9783110134063.