Marked and unmarked thematization patterns: A comparative analysis of persuasive texts written by American columnists and their Persian translations

Journal of Language and Pragmatics Studies, Volume 3 Number 2 (August 2024), p. 92-103 e-issn 2984-6051 ©Yayasan Mitra Persada Nusantara https://jurnal.ympn2.or.id/index.php/JLPS Marked and unmarked thematization patterns: A comparative analysis of persuasive texts written by American columnists and their Persian translations Tooba Mardani Young Researchers and Elite Club, Isfahan (Khorasgan) Branch, Islamic Azad University, Isfahan, Iran Email: Abstract - Thematization is the process of arranging theme, rheme patterns in a text. It is considered the mental act or process of selecting particular topics as themes in discourse or words as themes in sentences. This paper examines thematization strategies in English opinion articles and compares them with their Persian translations. To this end, one of the leading newspapers in the United States, The New York Times, was chosen. Based on the qualitative and quantitative analysis of textual features and marked and unmarked themes of 6 opinion articles and their Persian translations, this study aimed to find out how the translators organize their themes into marked and unmarked ones and how these organizations are related to the original texts. The findings revealed that thematization patterns can help the understanding of the texts. The results for the marked and unmarked thematization patterns were relatively the same in the original texts and their translations. Keywords: marked theme; functional grammar; thematization patterns; theme and rheme; unmarked theme I. INTRODUCTION Theme/rheme plays a major role in organizing the message and in enabling it to be communicated and understood clearly (Halliday, 1994). Whatever is chosen to be the first place, will influence the hearer/reader's interpretation of everything that comes next in the discourse since it will constitute the initial textual context for everything that follows (Alonso et al., 1998). Theme and rheme analysis is an area that has attracted the attention of some translation scholars. The basic premise is that sentences consist of themes, which present known, context-dependent information, and rhemes, which present new, context-independent information. Because they represent new information, it is rhemes rather than themes which push text development forward. 92 Journal of Language and Pragmatics Studies, Volume 3 Number 2 (August 2024), p. 92-103 e-issn 2984-6051 ©Yayasan Mitra Persada Nusantara https://jurnal.ympn2.or.id/index.php/JLPS According to Halliday (2004), theme is the element which serves as the point of departure of the message. When theme is conflated with the subject, it is called unmarked theme, and when a theme is something other than the subject, it can be referred as a marked theme. Thematization is one of the subcategories of textual analysis. Textual analysis is the analysis of the text in terms of its textual features or its texture. Thematization strategies are what the writer chooses as the theme of the clause. Newspapers are probably still the most read text types today, in hard copy or online. Newspaper editorials as a kind of opinion texts are different from the other types of news discourse in that they are supposed to present evaluations and comments about the news events already reported in the newspapers. An increasing volume of studies carried out by various scholars (Hall, 1982; Fairclough, 1989, 1995; Fowler, 1991; Hodge & Kress, 1993; Caldas-Coulthard et al., 1996; van Dijk, 1988a, 1991, 1993) has demonstrated that news, due to its nature, cannot be a totally valuefree reflection of facts. News production process comprises selection, interpretation, and presentation of events to audiences, thereby constructing reality in a manner corresponding with the underlying ideologies of the news producers and presenters. News imposes a structure of values on whatever it represents, and therefore produces meanings which construct ideological representations of a society (Fowler, 1991). Taking the importance of thematic structures in creating a more cohesive text into account, it requires shedding more light on the role of thematicity in translation. This means, to see what happens to the theme types and how they are tackled by translators when the text goes through a translation process. Any unmotivated and unreasonable change into thematic structures may cause difficulties in conveying the intended meaning of source text's author and then getting readers into great troubles because thematic structures and progression may be quite different among various languages. To Barzegar (2008), markedness does not greatly vary in English thematized constructions compared to Persian equivalents and there are some differences between marked and unmarked translations of English thematized sentences concerning their effect on the audiences. The results of Jallilifar's (2010) research on theme indicated overall similarities in both journals regarding different types of theme and patterns of thematic progression. But there were significant differences in the number and the context of the usage of different patterns of thematic progression in the introduction. Baker (1992) encourages formal academic training of translators through which they make a conscious effort to understand various aspects of their work. She claims " throughout its long history, translation has never really enjoyed the kind of recognition and respect that other professions such as medicine and engineering enjoy" and suggests "translators need to develop an ability to stand back and reflect on what they do and how they do it" (Baker 1992, p. 2-4). The investigation aims at comparing the English opinion articles and their Persian translations with regard to the use of marked and unmarked themes, and the research question is as follows. To what extent are persuasive texts written by American columnists and their Persian translations different with regard to marked and unmarked thematization patterns? This study is devoted to characterize thematization patterns or theme/ rheme organization in a sample of English newspapers and their translations into Persian According to Lotfipour-Saedi (1991), the texture of a text can be characterized by textual features of 1) thematization strategies, 2) schematic structure, 3) paralanguage and 4) cohesion (cited in Yarmohammadi, 1995). Halliday writes: "the ‘textual’ component in language is the set of options by means of which a speaker or writer is enabled to create texts" (Halliday 1994, p. 161). One key choice in the textual configuration of discourse is that of what will appear in Theme position; indeed, for Halliday (1985, p. 53), "the textual function of the clause is that of constructing a message" and the Theme/Rheme structure is the "basic form of 93 Journal of Language and Pragmatics Studies, Volume 3 Number 2 (August 2024), p. 92-103 e-issn 2984-6051 ©Yayasan Mitra Persada Nusantara https://jurnal.ympn2.or.id/index.php/JLPS t (...truncated)