PATTERNS OF COHERENCE AND INFORMATION FLOW IN THE ‘SYLVESTER AND THE MAGIC PEBBLE’ CHILDREN’S BOOK

Abstract

As the important concepts in Systemic Functional Linguistics, theme and rheme form the thematic structure. The connections between themes and rhemes of the preceding sentences and those of the latter sentences constitute patterns of thematic progression. Both the relations among thematic structures and the various thematic progression patterns help construct coherent meaning in a text. Based on Halliday’s theory of thematic structure and Martin’s information flow theory, this study probes into the function of macro-theme, hyper-themes and themes in construction of the textual coherence in children’s picture book “Sylvester and the Magic Pebble”. The themes and rhemes are identified in every sentence of this children’s picture book, at the same time, the percentage and usage of different types of themes and thematic progression patterns are calculated and analyzed. The result shows that the proportion of simple theme accounts to 68.1%. The simple themes are mainly undertaken by nouns and noun phrases. The textual coherence is also realized by other forms of cohesive ties, for example, reference, substitution, and lexical cohesion. The findings also show that there are four progression patterns adopted in the children’s picture book, nevertheless, the parallel and continuous progression patterns are most frequently used. The predictive function between different hierarchical themes makes the cohesion and coherence more natural and concise. Besides helping writers create better picture books with effective coherence, the theories of thematic structure and information flow help children grasp the important information of the story and build their emotions.