Overcoming an obstacle is commonly a goal theme for some subpart of the text which is construed with its own schema as a separate discourse unit. “The train ride” Appendix C has a provisional
global goal, for the narrator and her family to get to Omaha by train. The text contains obstacles which are dealt with in separate episodes. In regard to its external conceptualization §2.2.1, a text is
commonly embedded in a goal structure having to do with the speaker’s goal in giving it.
• P
ROPOSITIONAL THEMES
and
MACROPREDICATIONS
: As explained in §2.2.6, a macropredication, as a summary of what the discourse unit says, is actually a type of discourse theme, apparently a head
theme in each case. Argumentational schemas and consolidated narrative schemas commonly have macropredications. Commonly, a macropredication makes a statement about a nonhead theme. A
macropredication about a discourse topic, found in an encyclopedia article that is discussed in §3.4.4, is that the climate of England topic is moderate. The barber interview Appendix F presents a
macropredication there isn’t too many taking it up about the topic new barbers today. A hortative text typically has a hortatory macropredication along with a nonhead topic the person who is to carry
it out, as in the final part lines 14–35 of Churchill’s speech with its exhortation “Support the new government” that is directed first to Parliament but also to the nation. Wishes, on the other hand,
commonly lack this agent-topic and typically contain very little support material; they tend to be short, as in line 31 of Churchill’s speech Appendix A: Let that be realized. A macropredication
about a situational theme, mentioned above, is that a certain situation is bad. A macropredication about a goal theme, common in narratives such as “Winds of terror” see above or “Stone soup”
Appendix D, is that the goal was achieved in a particular way. A macropredication can even be about a nonhead propositional theme, as when the speaker seeks to establish that a certain prominent
proposition is true or false, as happened in the Jerusalem council of Acts 15 around the proposition “Circumcision is necessary for salvation.”
In Paez Macro-Chibchan, Colombia, certain paragraph themes are indicated by noun phrases as topics, while others, possibly macropredications, are indicated by entire sentences. Both kinds of themes
are left-detached elements which occur paragraph-initially and often elsewhere and have the same enclitic which occurs with sentence topics in the access function Gerdel and Slocum 1976:275. In
Guarani Mbyá, titles of written stories are either noun phrases ‘the past life of an ancient hunter’ or nominalized propositions ‘what happened as I was going along the path’ or ‘my having been startled as I
went along the path’. Nominalized propositions in titles seem to arise from reifying a situation or a macropredication in order to manipulate the text as a single chunk §2.3.3.
Figure 14 is a very tentative summary of certain schema types with common kinds of themes head or nonhead, provisional or final.
Schema type Common
provisional head theme Common final head theme Common nonhead theme
narrative goal or situation
macropredication topic
biography topic topic
procedural goal macropredication
hortatory goal
macropredication topic or situation
wish goal macropredication
situation argumentation macropredication
macropredication situation or
proposition description
topic or situation topic or situation
Figure 15: Schema types and common kinds of themes
Schemas are sometimes produced by blending two simpler schema types Fauconnier 1997, ch. 6; Fauconnier and Turner 1998. For example, there may be a blend of hortatory and procedural schemas, as
when Jesus tells his disciples to prepare the passover supper and how to find the place Mark 14:13–15.
3.4.3 Signalling themes
Themes are established by the use of both formal and conceptual signals. Typical correspondences between schema types and themes, summarized above in Figure 14, furnish conceptual evidence for a
particular theme. That is, once a genre and a schema type is recognized, a certain type of theme is indicated as well, as head. To take an obvious example, an obituary is a genre which has a characteristic
kind of narrative and descriptive schema with a topic as head. So then, rather than the output of knowledge management being “post-shaped” by thematic management, thematic management appears to
be antecedent to knowledge management or simultaneous with it. Thus thematic choice is realized, at least in part, through choices in knowledge management. Consequences of this include the following:
• Except when themes arise unintentionally, the planning of thematic structure logically precedes the
planning of macro-level schemas. In planning a discourse unit, a theme is commonly a first step. •
Paraphrase and translation that seek to preserve macro-level schemas also need to preserve themes §4.1.
• If a text’s macro-level schemas and concepts in which the speaker shows intrinsic interest are
included in the consolidated mental representation that the addressee retains in memory, then thematic organization is included as well. Under these suppositions, themes should be retained in
memory. Tomlin et al. 1997:83 say that themes do, in fact, “seem to be what is better remembered when a discourse is interpreted.”
Themes are implied not only by schema types, but sometimes also by the occurrence of some other type of theme. In a narrative with a goal theme, if it is a human participant who has the goal, then that
participant is commonly a topic. We see this in two narrative texts in the appendices. In the discussion of Example text 40 we will analyze the initial section of “Winds of terror” Appendix B, concluding that
Pattie is global topic from the first. Here we simply observe that this is predictable from the text’s strong goal theme of Pattie’s keeping the family safe. “The train ride” Appendix C also has a strong goal
theme, for the narrator and her family to arrive in Omaha, hence a likely topic also: the narrator and her family. This topic does not have as many different kinds of formal signals that Pattie does in “Winds of
terror,” but by repeated conceptual signals of text-internal viewpoint to be discussed in §3.6.2, the narrator and her family are clearly indicated as global topic. The following examples show the pervasive
occurrence of “reported private state” in this text:
Example text 25: “The train ride,” lines illustrating reported private state Olson 1992
02 …we thought…that it might be safer and wiser if we took the train… 05 It was really nice, and we thought, “Oh, boy, this is going to be fun….”
10 We stood there, and stood there. 23 “Now what do we do?”
27 …we wanted to get to Omaha and not stay in Minneapolis all night in the train station. 37 And with four little children and two of them not even a year old yet, it was a little hectic.
39 So we could see off in the distance that there was a little town. 52 But it was an experience that we will not soon forget.
53 And, it really caused our desire to ride on trains to disappear once and for all. 54 To add to this dilemma and frustration…,
55 So we decided to switch to another railroad line… 61 Because with the little kids it was rather difficult to sit on the suitcases.
62 …we’re thinking, “Oh boy, now maybe we can get on the nice train from Minneapolis to Duluth.” 64 So once again we were disappointed…
Even though these participant topics are predicted by the personal goal theme, they are not as strongly construed by the conceptual structure schema type, hence the relevance of these reported private states
as evidence of global topic status §3.6.4.
When a theme has formal as well as conceptual signals, as in “Winds of terror,” they make a strong case for a particular thematic organization. Chafe 2001:674 mentions certain prosodic signals of
“topics” our themes in oral text: “sometimes, though certainly not always, a longer-than-normal pause before a new topic is introduced; sometimes heightened pitch, loudness, acceleration, or a new voice
quality at the outset; sometimes a tapering off in these same prosodic features at the end.” That is, prosodic signals of themes are ostensive and serve to call attention to the fact of a major change of
direction. While I will have little to say here about syntactic or morphemic signals of themes in general, it is to be expected that, as for prosodic signals, establishing themes predictably involves formal salience.
The formal introduction of discourse topics, for example, typically has them occurring in the information- structure focus of the sentence §3.5.1.
Since addressees generally assume that the text is intended to be coherent and since theme is a primary coherence strategy §2.2.5, one way to evaluate a potential theme is in its payoff for coherence:
“Those inferences that produce the most coherent discourse for the least cognitive effort are the most likely to reveal the author’s theme” Bruce 2003:176f.. Thus, if two potential themes produce the same
degree of coherence but one requires less effort, it is more likely to be perceived as theme; or if two potential themes require the same effort but one produces more obvious coherence, it is more likely to be
perceived as theme.
In assessing cognitive effort, the addressee must take into account external as well as internal contextualization §2.2.1. In particular, if a potential theme is implausible on text-external criteria the
processing effort is high, even though text-internal criteria may point to it. Text-external knowledge and expectations—for example, what the addressee knows about the speaker, about the situation being
described, about the world—will influence her perceptions of themes §3.4.4. One example of this came out when a particular verse was being checked for comprehension in Mbyá Guarani, 2 Corinthians 10:4:
“The weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh, but divinely powerful for the destruction of fortresses.” When the informant was asked what he understood of that verse, he replied that that the apostle Paul
wasnt likely talking about tearing down physical fortresses. When asked why he thought that, he said that the Bible—and he didn’t know much about it at that point—isn’t about tearing things down. “Any
conceptually represented information available to the addressee can be used as a premise in this inferential process” Sperber and Wilson 1995:65.
3.4.4 Conceptual inclusion between themes
