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Article published In:
Language, Context and Text
Vol. 1:1 (2019) ► pp.121–147

The language of educational linguistics in Hispanic Latin America

Choices of Theme in an emerging field

ORCID logo | Universidad de O’Higgins

This study aims to identify patterns of the system of theme in Spanish in 28 educational linguistics’ articles, an emerging field in Latin America. Results show a high number of textual and elaborated interpersonal Themes (especially in Conclusions), alongside a frequent choice of marked Themes (especially in Introductions) which adjust thematic strings, while the Subject is usually explicit and previous to the verb. Educationally-oriented articles tend to use more interpersonal Themes and preposed explicit Subjects, in what seems to be a disciplinary validation struggle. This research can help understand the construction of a new disciplinary discourse, connecting semantic and lexicogrammatical patterns to epistemological frameworks, while providing evidence to the realization of Theme and Subject across stages, disciplines and languages.

Keywords: subject, educational linguistics, reading and writing, disciplinary discourse, schematic structure, Latin America, Spanish, method of development, epistemology
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Theoretical framework
    • 2.1The system of theme in SFL
    • 2.2Theme and discourse
    • 2.3Types of Theme
  • 3.Corpus and methodology
  • 4.Results and discussion
    • 4.1Theme
    • 4.2Subject
  • 5.Conclusions
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References


This article is currently available as a sample article.

Published online: 4 February 2019
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https://doi.org/10.1075/langct.00006.nav
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