A Study Of The Thematic Structure In Medical English

Halliday’s Systemic Functional Linguistic (SFL) which has been widely applied in analyzing texts in recent years is a powerful and instructive theory in academic fields. The textual metafunction is one component of the three metafunctions of SFL and its sub-theory:Theme-Rheme theory is considered to be of great importance in the construction of texts and organization of messages.Medical English plays an important role in the correspondence between western countries and China. For many years, studies of the medical English have been mainly on its vocabulary, grammar, context, cognition and some applications of medical English, such as medical English teaching, medical English translation and medical English writing. The studies of medical English from the perspective of functional grammar are mainly focused on ideational meaning and interpersonal meaning. However, the application of Theme-Rheme theory on the study of medical English is not sufficient. Thus, the present study is an attempt to contribute to analyzing medical English from the perspective of textual metafunction.This dissertation applies the Theme-Rheme theory as the theoretical framework and uses the qualitative method to investigate the medical English. In order to study the functions of different elements of clauses (especially including medical English clauses), it is indispensable to know much about the Theme-Rheme structures.The introductory part of this dissertation consists of the first four chapters which offer a brief overview of the research background of medical English and SFL, the literature review, the theoretical framework, and the characteristics of medical English. The central part falls upon two subsequent chapters:one is analyzing the textual metafunction of medical English; the other is about some difficulties of Theme analysis in medical English. The last chapter is the summarizing part which also points out implications and suggestions for further studies of medical English.All the language data are collected from Fundamental Medical English and Clinical Medical English which are published by Higher Education Press. The language data are persuasive and applicable, because the contents of selected texts cover various medical branches and the materials are chosen by Higher Education Press which is very authoritative and objective. This dissertation will use these texts thoroughly, accurately, and systematically in analyzing medical Enghsh. Meanwhile, the research method is basically qualitative, descriptive and explanatory.Given that the theory is tremendous complexity, it has only dealt with a small part of Theme-Rheme theory. Thus,.for further studies, there are two suggestions:(1) medical English can be analyzed from an alternative perspective;(2) the connection between SFL and medical English can be further explored.