An Analysis Of Themes And Thematic Progression Patterns In Food Recall Announcements

The ICM ANNUAL CRISIS REPORT--GLOBAL NEWS COVERAGE OF BUSINESS CRISES IN 2016 stated that product defects and recall stories are happening constantly,the ratio of this issue as high as 22%.Among all the industries,the first three most crisis-prone industries are automotive,pharmaceutical and food industries.Thus,an effective and timing recall announcement is an optimal strategy for a company to protect its reputation and reduce a further damage caused by problematic products.Scholars made ample studies on product recall announcements from different perspectives,such as legal liabilities,pubic health and crisis management,etc.The exploration from the perspective of language is also involved,but most focus on genre studies and interpersonal function studies,while study from the angle of Theme theory is very few.Halliday,inspired by scholars of Prague School,put forward Theme theory and this theory certainly laid a solid foundation for the later research on texts from the perspective of TP Patterns.Theme theory is based on three meta-functions of language,and one of the realization methods of textual function depends on thematic structure,which is a kernel to analyze discourse cohesion and coherence.According to different criteria,Halliday classified Theme and Rheme into different types,and he also exploited the choice of Theme and Rheme in different clauses.Later,scholars found that the arrangements of Theme and Rheme of clauses in a coherent text are regular,which are not randomly.And the pattern of the arrangement between Themes and Rhemes is called thematic progression by F.Danes,a Czech linguist.Domestic scholars,such as Xu Shenghuan(1982),Huang Yan(1987),Huang Guowen(1988),also put forward different TP Patterns,aiming to reveal the dynamism distribution of Themes and the organization of a text.Later,Theme theory and TP Patterns were applied to analyze differentdiscourses,such as advertisements,public speeches and news reports,etc.But studies in recall announcements are very few.Thus,this thesis collects 20 intact recall announcement samples from 15 different companies in the websites of two different federal agencies www.fda.usda.gov and www.fsis.usda.gov,covering almost all the food products,etc.endeavoring to figure out the following questions:(1)What are the distributions of thematic structures and TP Patterns in recall announcements?(2)What are the features of thematic structures and TP Patterns in recall announcements?(3)How are the textual and social functions realized by different TP patterns?Based on the statistics and features of the these thematic structures and TP Patterns,findings of this thesis are as below:(1)The clauses used in recall announcements are almost declaratives,which are easy to provide direct information.(2)In terms of the complexity of Theme,simple Theme is the top priority,while multiple Theme and clausal Theme are few.Regarding components acting as simple Themes,nominal group is the usual choice.(3)No interpersonal Theme is founded among these few multiple Themes,which further evidences that the discourse of recall announcement is objective,and personal emotion and subjective judgment should be evaded.(4)In terms of markedness of Theme,the frequencies of unmarked Theme surpass marked Theme absolutely,and nominal groups are the most used components as unmarked Theme in recall announcements.(5)Five TP Patterns are founded in these collected recall announcements.The more used patterns are irregular patterns,constant Theme patterns and simplelinear patterns,while the less used patterns are constant Rheme patterns,alternative patterns.This thesis extends Theme theory and TP Patterns to a new genre of discourse––product recall announcement,which further enriches the applicability of this theory.Besides,it is also conducive to English learning,especially for writing because cohesion devices applied in these texts could be mastered by studying thematic structure and TP Patterns.