Sunday 14 October 2018

On Macro-Theme, Hyper-Theme, Hyper-New And Macro-New

Bateman (1998: 20):
Martin also proposes here some valuable additions: particularly in the area of text structure, with the text-scale structurings of hyper- and macro-themes and their complementary elements: hyper- and macro-new [see Figure 6.12, p456], and in contrasts between static and process views of texts.

Blogger Comments:

[1] To be clear, Martin's terms are rebrandings of terms from writing pedagogy:
  • macro-Theme is a rebranding of introductory paragraph,
  • hyper-Theme (a term taken from Daneš and misunderstood) is a rebranding of topic sentence,
  • hyper-New is a rebranding of paragraph summary, and
  • macro-New is a rebranding of text summary.
This is why writing pedagogues believe "Martin's" ideas are a valuable resource.  However, advising people how to write is not modelling language, and spoken language is not planned and organised on the basis of effective writing strategies.  But these are, by no means, the only problems.

For some of the misunderstandings and inconsistencies in the notion of macro-Theme see the 16 clarifying critiques here.
For some of the misunderstandings and inconsistencies in the notion of hyper-Theme see the 16 clarifying critiques here.
For some of the misunderstandings and inconsistencies in the notion of hyper-New see the 8 clarifying critiques here.
For some of the misunderstandings and inconsistencies in the notion of macro-New see the 11 clarifying critiques here.

[2] To be clear, Martin's "contrasts between static and process views of texts" essentially confuse syntagmatic realisation ("static") with the process of instantiation in logogenesis ("dynamic").  This misunderstanding pervades Martin's text; see, for example:

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