An Outline of a Theory of Information Structure
Information Structure in Spoken English - A Systemic Functional Linguistics View - Gerard O'Grady
Gerard O'Grady [+]
Cardiff University
Gerard O'Grady is a professor in the School of English, Communication and Philosophy at Cardiff University.
Description
In this chapter I will sketch work on information structure pre Halliday. This work will include mention of Aristotle, Weil and Prague School work e.g. Mathesius and explain his three part definition of theme. I will also briefly mention the work of Firbas and Daneš (discussed in detail in chapter 3) in order to contextualise what Davidse calls Halliday’s separating theme. The separation of the theme and information systems is a distinguishing feature of SFL and the chapter will describe how the systems fit into the textual metafunction and into the wider SFL architecture.