| Discourses of different genres have different thematic structure and thematic progression patterns(TP patterns). It is a research hotspot to study certain discourse based on the thematic theory. As a method to transmit the cultural and environmental features of one country, documentary symbolizes the country’s language level and cultural concept. The collocation of images, sounds, and words is strict. BBC documentary Wild China is co-produced by BBC and CCTV taking over 16 months.It is the model of human geography documentary. But many studies are about the aesthetic choice, artistic expression, creative characteristics, and development tendency of the documentary. Studies on the documentary commentary are not largely seen. Most of the commentary studies are based on the translation theory rather than the thematic theory.The commentary of documentary Wild China’s first episode is chosen as the research object. Based on Halliday’s Theme-Rheme theory and Huang Yan’s seven thematic progression patterns, the thesis analyzes the commentary of Wild China’s first episode from the features and functions of documentary. At first, the types and distribution of thematic structure and TP patterns in Wild China’s commentary are classified and calculated. Then, a detailed analysis is given to explain the reasons for this phenomenon.Major findings can be gotten from this research:First, in the documentary of Wild China’s first episode, there are simple Themes as well as multiple Themes, marked Themes as well as unmarked Themes. Thematic Progression patterns of the documentary of Wild China’s first episode include spring pattern, linear pattern, parallel pattern, concentrated pattern, derived pattern, and crossing pattern. There is no interchanging theme pattern at all.Second, the percentage of simple Theme(79.5%) is larger than that of multiple Theme(20.5%). Among the multiple Themes, textual Themes(93.9%) are used more frequently than interpersonal Themes(6.1%). In addition, Unmarked Themes(64.3%)are used more frequently than marked Themes(35.7%). Among the unmarked Themes, nominal groups(71.9%) take considerably higher percentage, while first person pronouns and second person pronouns are not used at all. Among marked Themes, adjunct constituents(99.1%) take a dominant percentage. Among the seven TP patterns, interchanging theme pattern is not used at all. With the sequence of frequency from high to low, the other six patterns are spring pattern(51.7%), linear pattern(18.3%), parallel pattern(11.3%), concentrated pattern(10.3%), derived pattern(4.9%), and crossing pattern(3.5%).Third, the adoption of many simple Themes can help the viewers capture the main message easily so that audiences at different language levels can understand what the documentary is talking about. The employment of few interpersonal Theme conforms with documentary’s features of objectivity.The adoption of many unmarked Themes and nominal groups may be influenced by the concise, objective and formal features of documentary. The most use of adjunct constituents among marked Themes is effected by the content of Wild China’s first episode. Wild China is a documentary about the culture and landscape of southern China. It takes the changing of time and site as its main line. So temporal adverbials and locative adverbials are shown more frequently than other kinds of marked Themes.Among the seven thematic progression patterns, the percentage of spring pattern is highest. As it is, documentary is the combination of image, sound, and commentary.Despite there are many spring patterns, the discourse is still coherent. The adoption of linear pattern, parallel pattern, and concentrated pattern conforms to the audience’s cognitive habit, decreases the difficulty of documentary, and is beneficial to attract audiences at different language level. Interchanging Theme pattern is usually used in the comparative discourses. There is no need to use this pattern since the documentary is a narrative discourse. |
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