GRAMMAR AND DISCOURSE ANANLYSIS OF ABSTRACT WRITINGS IN MS DISSERTATION

Back to Page Authors: Afsheen Kashifa, Asma Karim

Keywords: discourse, functional grammar, theme, rheme, thematic progression

Abstract: This paper of research suggests the use of grammatical patterns in terms of thematic progression and theme-rheme to create cohesive text at MPhil level. The researcher has explored the pattern of thematic progression or TP in the abstracts written by English students of MPhil literature at NUML, Islamabad, Pakistan. For this study, 05 abstracts have randomly been selected from which the sentences are analyzed to show their thematic patterning. The paper also explains the link between linguistic thematic progression and theme-rheme patterns. The researcher has mentioned the ways discussed in functional grammar to write an abstract in a more systematic and organized way because abstract of any work depicts the standard and worth of any piece of investigation. Therefore, the theory proposed by Halliday and Hasan is used as the framework to analyze the pattern employed in the abstracts in terms of constant rheme TP pattern and theme-derived TP patterns.