Toward A Cognitive Interpretation Of Thematic Structure

This thesis studies the thematic structure from a cognitive perspective. It first provides a historical review of the development of the thematic structure theory, including researches done by scholars at home and abroad. Then, drawing on three theories in cognitive linguistics, namely, the principle of iconicity, the notion of perspective and the prominence view, this thesis enquires into the thematic structure and comes to two important conclusions as follows. (1) The thematic structure can manifest the iconicity between the speakers'cognitive state and their word expression. (2) Thematic choice is closely related to, or more specifically, partly determined by, the perspective adopted by the speaker, or what he considers prominent and important. On the other hand, the analysis of the thematic choice may help us to realize the perspective assumed by the speaker, or what is prominent and important in his mind, so we can get a better understanding of the intentions and implied meaning of the speaker.On the basis of these discussions, a cognitive study of the thematic structure of O. Henry's"The Cop and The Anthem"is presented. It first randomly selects some parts of the story for illustration and then provides an overall account of the Themes of the text. Through the analysis, the author's criticism of the society and his sympathy for people at the bottom of the social ladder is revealed. The analysis of the thematic structure of this literary discourse speaks volumes for the above-mentioned two conclusions. It also proves that the analysis of thematic structure of a literary text is an important way to get a better understanding of the text and the intensions of its author. Therefore, when doing discourse analysis, we should pay special attention to the arrangement of the thematic structure and take the author's cognition into consideration.