Didactics of Translation: Text in Context

Thematic and information structures in the Prague School approach

The Prague School approach with regard to thematic and information structures is different from that of Halliday. One of its main points of strength is that it can be used to account for the interactional organization of languages, such as Arabic, which have a free word order. This approach, which looks at the relationship between syntax and communicative function, is referred to as Functional Sentence Perspective (FSP).

According to Baker (1992: 161), “the main premise in FSP is that the communicative goals of an interaction cause the structure of a clause or sentence to function in different kinds of perspective”. To illustrate this point, she gives the example mentioned by Jan Firbas (1986) and in which the sentence John has been taken ill will, in context, function in a certain kind of perspective according to the purpose of communication. Thus, it may act as:

1. 
   a statement of someone’s state of health
   
2. 
   as an identification of the person who is ill
   
3. 
   as an affirmation of the validity of the information put forward.
   

For perspective 1, the focus is on the word ill; for perspective 2, the focus is on John and finally for perspective 3, the focus is on the word has. This analysis is reminiscent of Halliday’s information structure analysis.
The notion of FSP, that the goal of communication influences the structure of a clause or sentence in such a way that it functions in different kinds of perspectives, was the prelude to another important notion, namely, Communicative Dynamism (CD). This notion was introduced by Firbas (1972). It does not take the place of the concepts of theme/rheme, given/new but rather supplements them. For Baker (1992: 161),
the concepts of theme/rheme and given/new are supplemented in Firbas’ model with a non-binary notion that determines which elements are thematic and which are not thematic in a clause. This is the notion of communicative dynamism.
Firbas (1972: 78) cited in Baker (Ibid) defines CD in the following terms:
Communicative Dynamism… is based on the fact that linguistic communication is not a static, but a dynamic phenomenon. By CD I understand a property of communication, displayed in the course of the development of the information to be conveyed and consisting in advancing this development. By the degree of CD carried by a linguistic element, I understand the extent to which the element contributes to the development of the communication, to which, as it were, it pushes the communication forward.
For Firbas, theme is made up of context-dependent elements, whereas rheme is made up of context independent elements. Therefore, the former has a lower degree of CD while the latter has a higher one.

In conclusion, the FSP approach is different from the Hallidayan approach because it does not regard theme/rheme as “being realized chiefly by their relative positions in the clause” (Baker1992: 164); other factors are at play here, namely, context and semantic structure.

Furthermore, whereas the Hallidayan approach considers thematic and information structures as being separate, but sometimes overlapping, the FSP approach collapses the two structures.

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