Thematic
progression
Thematic progression refers to the way Themes continually pick
up information which is already in the text and repeat it in some way so that
the reader is always aware of:
o what the key concepts
are;
o how the key
concepts are being developed?
By constantly ‘recycling’ information in the preceding sentences
as Themes of the next, writers are able to create very strong links between one
sentence and the next, and one paragraph and the next.
Three effective ways to use Theme
1. To maintain the
focus on a single idea
Read the following short text and look at the highlighted
Themes. In this text, the writer has chosen to maintain a focus on the media
used for recording messages– all three sentence Themes are different media. The
writer is using a simple Theme - Theme - Theme technique to keep the focus.
Rocks were originally used to carry carved or painted messages.
Scrolled leather onto which messages were crudely scratched, was
used in later Neolithic times.
Heavy hand copies parchment took over in the middle ages/ when
monks had the leisure to embellish them with fine inks and costly gold leafing.
Theme New
Theme New
Theme New
2. To develop the ‘New’ component
Instead of just repeating the ideas and information in the
Themes, you can use the information in the New as the next Theme. As with
repeating the Theme, you can repeat the information you take from the New
almost exactly or by using a synonym or related idea.
In this short text, the writer has picked up the ideas in the
New of the preceding sentences and turned them into the Themes of the following
sentences. This keeps a very tight thread of ideas running through the text. In
this example, the ideas in the New are quite closely mirrored in the language
of the following Themes (economic disadvantage – economic disadvantage; better
themselves – self-betterment).
Example 1
Poor education is
associated with economic disadvantage.
Economic
disadvantage helps to ensure/that
the text generation of children is also deprived of opportunities to better themselves.
Since self-betterment is a constant expectation of our society,
those who fail to engage in it will always be at a psychological as well as a financial
disadvantage.
Example 2
In this text, the writer has also used the ideas in the New of
the preceding sentences to form the Themes of the subsequent sentences.
However, the information is not directly repeated – it is repeated, instead, as
exemplification (developing world – Bangladesh, Afghanistan and many African
nations) or as synonyms (developed countries – the Western world). The logical
connections in the text are in no way obscured or weakened by this. The
progression is obvious and the text remains strongly cohesive.
The issue of educational disadvantage has been
widely studied in
the developing world.
Countries such as Bangladesh, Afghanistan and many
African nations
have extremely poor levels of education compared to the
developed countries.
However, the Western world seems
little concerned with
its responsibility to shoulder the economic and humanitarian consequences of
continued poverty as a result of stagnant educational achievement.
Theme New
Theme New
3. To develop more than one Theme from a New
You can also place a number of ideas in a single New, and then
develop a series of Themes from this single New. This technique is very common
in academic writing. It is particularly useful when you are organising
information within a paragraph or within an argument.
In this example, the New component of the opening sentence
outlines a number of areas that will be followed through. Each one in turn is
placed in Theme position, keeping to the order in which they were originally
mentioned. The result is a highly structured and visually cohesive piece of
text.
There are three main categories of argument in relation to
capital punishment: retributive arguments, utilitarian arguments and deterrence
arguments.
Retributive arguments basically pursue the religiously inspired ‘eye for an eye’
approach arguing that a second person’s death avenges and cancels out the death
of the first.
Utilitarian arguments tend to be more sanguine, encompassing economic arguments
related to the lesser costs of capital punishment as well as those based on a
negative view of the perpetrator’s future usefulness to society.
Deterrence arguments focus on the use of capital punishment as a preventive measure
to dissuade others from committing capital crimes.
Theme New A,B,C
Theme A New
Theme B New
Theme C New
Do I have to choose a particular method of
thematic progression?
No. As a writer you have choices to make. What matters is that
your text is cohesive – it must flow logically and hang together well.
You can use all three ways within a single paragraph or
argument. Your choice of thematic organisation will depend on:
·
which key ideas and information you want the reader to focus on.
·
how you want to develop your paragraph or argument; in other
words, the ideas you want to introduce and how you want to relate them to one
another.
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