The Problems With Hyper-Theme And Hyper-New As Linguistic Theory

Martin, Matthiessen & Painter (2010: 278):

Similarly, the waves' attack is introduced with a pair of clauses prefacing what is to come; in addition the results of the waves' incursion is summed once they've left the beach:

Technically speaking, forward looking topic sentences can be referred to as hyper-Themes (higher level Themes in other words), and retrospective summary comments as hyper-New. Both are a common feature of planned edited written discourse, and can be used to reinforce the partitioning of the text into phases signalled by marked Themes.

Blogger Comments:

[1] Again, hyper-Theme is writing pedagogy (topic sentence) masquerading as linguistic theory, and analysing a written text for hyper-Themes is merely confirming the extent to which a writer has deployed this writing strategy. Moreover, in linguistic theory, the function of Theme is to set the context of what follows, rather than to 'preface' it, and it is one element of a structure along with Rheme. In the case of hyper-Theme, no structure featuring a contrasting hyper-Rheme is identified.

[2] To be clear, hyper-New is also writing pedagogy (paragraph summary) masquerading as linguistic theory, and analysing a written text for hyper-News is merely confirming the extent to which a writer has deployed this writing strategy. Moreover, in linguistic theory, New information may either follow or precede Given information in a structural configuration. In the case of hyper-New, no structure featuring a contrasting hyper-Given is identified. A close examination of Martin (1992) on hyper-Theme can be viewed here.

[3] Again, Martin (1992) took the term 'hypertheme' from Daneš (1974), where it refers to the first of repeated themes (the theme that is 'over' or 'above' later repetitions).

[4] Again, this is writing pedagogy (proposals on how to write), not linguistic theory (propositions that model language).