Theme's Contribution To Textual Coherence In English

Adopting Halliday's Functional Grammar and the theory of Text Linguistics, the author makes a research on this topic: how Theme, in English language, contributes to the textual coherence? In Halliday's Functional Grammar, the adult's language has three Metafunctions: Ideational, Interpersonal, and Textual. Theme, actualizing the message in the clause, is the psychological subject, the starting-point of the message, and the element about which the clause wants to display. A Maximally Extended Theme includes three sub-Themes: Textual, Interpersonal, and Experiential. Experiential Theme is the core of the general Theme. Interpersonal Theme has three inner elements: Vocative, Modal, and Finite. Textual Theme also includes three elements: Continuative, Structural and Conjunctive. A coherent text must have texture, which can be realized by the following methods: lexicogrammatical means, structural means, semantic means, and etc. All this means can be actualized by Theme. Theme plays a very important role in text, and through Theme the writer can organize the mode of development for the text. In this research, a qualitative approach is adopted to study how the textual coherence is achieved through the components and the variants of Theme. These examples in this paper are all from the works or the speeches by native language users so as to assure that these examples are natural and original. They are not concocted by the researcher to meet particular purpose. This research ends up with the two conclusions: (1). In English, Theme is very important in achieving the textual coherence, and every element as well as every variant of Theme, in their particular ways, contribute to textual coherence. (2). In English, Theme's contribution to textual coherence is closely related to Metafunctions in Halliday's grammar. Through three Metafunctions: Experiential, Interpersonal, and Textual Function, English Theme contributes to textual coherence.