Manifestation of theme as a point of departure in the result and discussion section of academic research articles

Theme is the element which serves as the point of departure of the message in a clause. It plays a major role in text organization, enabling a text to be communicated and understood clearly (Halliday, 1994). One issue in research article writing is how the writer deals with this important textual fe...

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Main Authors: Ebrahimi, Seyed Foad, Chan, Swee Heng
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: Universiti Putra Malaysia Press 2013
Online Access:http://psasir.upm.edu.my/id/eprint/40714/
http://psasir.upm.edu.my/id/eprint/40714/1/03%20Page%2029-40%20%28JSSH-0904-2013%29.pdf
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author Ebrahimi, Seyed Foad
Chan, Swee Heng
author_facet Ebrahimi, Seyed Foad
Chan, Swee Heng
author_sort Ebrahimi, Seyed Foad
building UPM Institutional Repository
collection Online Access
description Theme is the element which serves as the point of departure of the message in a clause. It plays a major role in text organization, enabling a text to be communicated and understood clearly (Halliday, 1994). One issue in research article writing is how the writer deals with this important textual feature. This study did an analysis of theme types used in result and discussion section of research articles using Halliday's (2004) model of thematic organization. The study was carried out on the corpus of 16 result and discussion sections that were sourced from 16 research articles published in UPM journals in 2010 and 2011 from four disciplines, which are English Language Teaching, Economics, Biology, and Civil Engineering (4 from each discipline). The results revealed disciplinary differences in the use of theme across the four disciplines. These differences are supported by the claim that writing in each discipline is shaped by the discipline's own rules and conventions (Hyland, 2009; North, 2005). The results also supported the idea proposed by Gosden (1992) that theme types are important in fulfilling rhetorical functions of research article sections.
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spelling upm-407142015-10-08T04:59:20Z http://psasir.upm.edu.my/id/eprint/40714/ Manifestation of theme as a point of departure in the result and discussion section of academic research articles Ebrahimi, Seyed Foad Chan, Swee Heng Theme is the element which serves as the point of departure of the message in a clause. It plays a major role in text organization, enabling a text to be communicated and understood clearly (Halliday, 1994). One issue in research article writing is how the writer deals with this important textual feature. This study did an analysis of theme types used in result and discussion section of research articles using Halliday's (2004) model of thematic organization. The study was carried out on the corpus of 16 result and discussion sections that were sourced from 16 research articles published in UPM journals in 2010 and 2011 from four disciplines, which are English Language Teaching, Economics, Biology, and Civil Engineering (4 from each discipline). The results revealed disciplinary differences in the use of theme across the four disciplines. These differences are supported by the claim that writing in each discipline is shaped by the discipline's own rules and conventions (Hyland, 2009; North, 2005). The results also supported the idea proposed by Gosden (1992) that theme types are important in fulfilling rhetorical functions of research article sections. Universiti Putra Malaysia Press 2013-11 Article PeerReviewed application/pdf en http://psasir.upm.edu.my/id/eprint/40714/1/03%20Page%2029-40%20%28JSSH-0904-2013%29.pdf Ebrahimi, Seyed Foad and Chan, Swee Heng (2013) Manifestation of theme as a point of departure in the result and discussion section of academic research articles. Pertanika Journal of Social Sciences & Humanities, 21 (spec. Nov.). pp. 29-40. ISSN 0128-7702; ESSN: 2231-8534 http://www.pertanika.upm.edu.my/Pertanika%20PAPERS/JSSH%20Vol.%2021%20%28S%29%20Nov.%202013/03%20Page%2029-40%20%28JSSH-0904-2013%29.pdf
spellingShingle Ebrahimi, Seyed Foad
Chan, Swee Heng
Manifestation of theme as a point of departure in the result and discussion section of academic research articles
title Manifestation of theme as a point of departure in the result and discussion section of academic research articles
title_full Manifestation of theme as a point of departure in the result and discussion section of academic research articles
title_fullStr Manifestation of theme as a point of departure in the result and discussion section of academic research articles
title_full_unstemmed Manifestation of theme as a point of departure in the result and discussion section of academic research articles
title_short Manifestation of theme as a point of departure in the result and discussion section of academic research articles
title_sort manifestation of theme as a point of departure in the result and discussion section of academic research articles
url http://psasir.upm.edu.my/id/eprint/40714/
http://psasir.upm.edu.my/id/eprint/40714/
http://psasir.upm.edu.my/id/eprint/40714/1/03%20Page%2029-40%20%28JSSH-0904-2013%29.pdf