Study On Textual Function Of Theme And Thematic Progression Patterns In Prepared Speeches

Thematical structure belongs to textual function. Since Mathesius put forwardthe concept of theme and rheme, scholars at home and abroad did a great deal ofresearch on the theme theory. Theme is the departure of the message, and is the focusof the clause; rheme is the rest part of the clause, and is the nucleus of the clause.Thematic progression means the relationship and the change between the theme andrheme among the clauses in the text. Scholars have also done a great deal of researchon the thematic structure and thematic progression, concerning the advertisement text,news text, political speech text, etc. But there are few researches on the universitystudents’ prepared speech.This thesis is based on Halliday’s theme theory and six thematic progressionpatterns put forward by Huang Guowen. The data are adopted from the sixteenth21stCentury Cup National English Speech Contest. Qualitative analysis is used in thisthesis to analyze the data. The major findings are illustrated in the following:Firstly, with regard to the simple theme, multiple theme and the clausal theme,students tend to employ simple theme as the dominant in their prepared speeches.Secondly, as for the constituents of the theme used in the prepared speech, pronounhas the highest proportion, followed by the nominal group. Thirdly, as far as pronounis concerned, the most frequently used one is the first person pronoun “I”, with thesecond personal pronoun “you” and the plural of the first person pronoun “we” takingthe second and third places respectively. Fourthly, as for the markedness of the theme,the unmarked theme is widely used. Finally, in the thematic progression patterns, fiveof Huang Guowen’s patterns are used, but the parallel thematic progression and thelinear thematic progression are the main patterns used in the prepared speeches.In the end, major findings, implications and the limitations are presented.