Didactics of Translation: Text in Context

Information structure in Halliday’s approach

In the information structure of a clause as a message, the distinction is made between two elements: given and new. Given refers to information

that is already known to the hearer/reader, whereas new refers to information that has not been known to the hearer/reader. According to Baker (1992: 141) while thematic structure is speaker-oriented, information structure is hearer-oriented:

The distinction between theme and rheme is speaker-oriented. It is based on what the speaker wants to announce as his/her starting point and what he/she goes on to say about it. A further distinction can be drawn between what is given and what is new in a message. This is a hearer-oriented distinction. It is based on what part of the message is known to the hearer and what part is new.
The given/new elements of information structure corroborate the interactional organization view of the clause as a message in which the addresser/addressee relationship is most significant. Here the speaker/writer takes into consideration the state of knowledge of the hearer/reader and organizes his message in a way that takes account of information already present in the mind of the latter (2). The motivation behind all this is, as it has been mentioned before, to ensure a clear flow of information throughout the text.
Although Halliday and Hasan restricted their use of the given/new elements to spoken discourse, taking the tone group as the domain of information structure instead of the clause, Baker (1992: 147) maintains that written language can also be analyzed in terms of given and new since both spoken and written language share “many of the devices used to signal information status”. Of these devices, one finds references to the context (has an information item been mentioned before), the use of definiteness, the use of subordination (in the case of given information), the use of certain syntactic structures (such as cleft and pseudo-cleft structures) and the use of punctuation (such as in distinguishing between defining and non-defining relative clauses, where the defining relative clause adds no new meaning.

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