Functional Analysis of Marked and Unmarked Theme

The last lecture was full of new information. It was interesting for us to explore this new topic . I especially liked the "Marked and Unmarked Themes" sub-theme. And I found and read an article called "Functional Analysis of Marked and Unmarked Theme" by Ali Jabbar Al Bakaa.

Theme serves as a starting point and is essential for the structure of academic messages as well as for clause functions like the ideas of authorial voice and critical thinking. According to Halliday (2004), a theme is a constituent that acts as the clause's starting point and can be recognized by its placement. This indicates that while presenting the components of critical thinking and self-voice, it is crucial to employ the main concept and/or author in the subject position stem of any clause. This raises an essential concern about how graduate students approach the role of marked and unmarked themes as a point of departure in presenting a critical argument as academic writers. As a result, this article I read attempts to show how academic assignment writers handle the functions of marked and unmarked themes to present critical argumentation. This article examined a corpus of four academic assignments from four masters students using Halliday's (2004) model of thematic organization (two Iraqi non-native and two Australian native writers of English). The findings demonstrated that whereas Iraqi writers pledged their commitment to their textbooks and course materials, Australian authors were more obvious in demonstrating the elements of critical thinking and self-voice as a dual competency for their writing.  This information will help Iraqi EFL instructors at Iraqi universities determine precisely what needs to be made explicit in the framing and language of academic assignments. It will also give Iraqi postgraduate students a better understanding of problems to help them develop their authorial voice and critical thinking in demonstrating a critical argument. 

The data analysis revealed that the functional use of the Marked and Unmarked themes as a point of start in formulating the critical arguments differs rather than is comparable. The successful segments written by native writers include personal judgment in the topic position stems and link that judgment with the other sentences in a very effective and consistent manner, according to the study of unmarked themes in both segments. Instead of adopting an internal textual theme to connect the sentences in that segment and provide a sense of focal clarification, the Iraqi postgraduate non-native writers tended to repeat the nominal subject as theme. Instead of focusing on the structures at the level of their entire written discourse, these non-native Iraqi writers tended to concentrate on the structures at the level of words and sentences. 

The distinction between these two groups suggests that Iraqi postgraduate students created descriptive as opposed to argumentative elements. This demonstrates how critical thinking has evolved throughout cultures. The findings of this study will be helpful to Iraqi English language students as they learn the critical thinking skills necessary for writing in the English language. The study has pinpointed the issue of inadequate critical thinking and self-voice instruction in the formation of academic arguments in the Iraqi writing education system. For the students to develop healthy academic argumentative writing without favoring one curriculum over another, it would be desirable to take another step toward integrating both critical thinking and self-voice in Iraqi academic writing.