The Analysis of the Story of My Life fromthe Perspective of the Textual Function.docVIP

The Analysis of the Story of My Life fromthe Perspective of the Textual Function 　　【Abstract】This paper analyzes some chapters of The Story of My Life from the point of view of the textual metafunction， namely， it analyzes how the message is organized in a context. This paper selects some contexts of the book to elaborate the textual function. It may be feasible to analyze from the aspect of theme and rheme since in certain situation the construction of the context reflects the intention of the author’s and at the same time it can make a certain effect on readers or receivers. 　　【Key words】textual function； theme； rheme； cohesion；context 　　1. Identifying Theme 　　1.1 Theme in declarative clauses 　　In this kind of cases， the Theme of the sentence is the Subject. We can see some examples in the ChapterⅥ： 　　1.2 Theme in non-declarative clauses 　　Usually， we ask a question for some ‘missing’ information and what the questioner wants to know is at the starting point in a sentence. So the WH-word or group usually appears in Theme position. As the examples in Fig.2 show， the missing information can be any part of the sentence： Adjunct or Subject. 　　2.1 Thematic equatives 　　The English thematic equative is a special thematic structure， which is termed as “pseudocleft” in formal linguistics. The starting point in a thematic equative is often a question that the speaker images the hearer might want to ask at this stage in the text. Particular in speech， the thematic equative seems to serve more as a way of ‘staging’ the message： splitting it into two chunks that the hearer will find easier to process. In the following case， more than one element of the message are grouped into a single clause constituent that function as a Theme. 　　What many children think of with dread， as a painful plodding through grammar， hard sums and harder definitions， is to-day one of my most precious memories. 　　In some cases， speakers may pick out a single element and endow it with emp