The schematic structure of a literature review has already been provided in the section Generic Stages. This offers a generic framework of the construction of a literature review, one of the academic written genres, but the text requires cohesion and coherence that link up sentences and paragraphs so that it creates “texture” – the property of being a text. Texture includes lexico-grammatical devices such as “reference, ellipsis, substitution, conjunction and lexical cohesion”, contributing to the coherence of the text (Halliday & Hasan, 1976 in Liu & Braine, 2005).

Cohesion and coherence are important to writing, but both L1 and L2 English learners find it difficult to deploy cohesive devices (Liu & Braine, 2005). A range of literatures discovered such difficulties. The overuse of the same lexical item as a cohesive device in students’ writing, with a lack of other lexico-grammatical devices, is common among both L1 and L2 students (Khalil, 1989; Palmer, 1999; Zhang, 2000). Meanwhile, Wikborg (1990) found that the Swedish students in the study failed to make sentence connections, use proper cohesive devices or other misuse that affected and broke the coherence of the text.

In light of this, this section will shed light on “textual organisation”, that how successful literature reviews facilitate effective flow of information through thematic patterning, forecast and enclose the content in the paragraph using HyperThemes and HyperNews, predict the topics in the text through MacroTheme and MacroNews, and deploy other resources that help regulate information flow like waves, or “periodicity”.

Traditional schooling emphasises the “Subject-Verb-Object” structure of a sentence, and subject always starts the sentence and carries important information. In Systemic Functional Linguistics, the “peak of prominence” takes up the subject position of a clause, and is called Theme. That is, anything before the process (verb) is the Theme, and anything after Theme is New or Rheme. The length of the Theme varies – a Theme can be a participle (Example (1)), contain an embedded clause (Example (2)) or adverbials (Example (3)):

Table 1. Theme and News

The table above also shows a method for Theme analysis: division of a phase of discourse into clauses and identification of the Themes. One important thing to note during Theme analysis is identifying the marked Theme. As mentioned earlier, the Subject is the common choice of the Theme (the unmarked Theme), and Themes that are not subject are marked, meaning they exert special effects to the clauses as they are more prominent. Consider the following examples:

Both (4) and (5) are grammatically correct in terms of clause structure, while the adverb clause of concession in (5) shifts to the initial position of the clause, showing its prominence. Apart from the above examples, phrases like in fact, undoubtedly, however or subordinate clauses shifting to the prominent position are also considered as marked themes. Table 2 is an extract of the conclusion section of a literature review for Thematic analysis.

The above analysis illustrates a picture of the prominent elements in the conclusion section of the sample literature review through the careful arrangement of both marked and unmarked Themes. With Eggins’ notion as a start, “we” (meaning “teachers”) and suggestions to teachers become the prominent Themes in the section. The marked Themes signal the new phases in a clause (ref. 1.1.2 and 1.1.3 as projected clauses), and mark the change of the subject (ref. 1.3.1 as signalling another suggestion following the previous one). They work like “connectives” or cohesive devices to ensure the coherence among the clauses, that is, in Martin and Rose’s (2003) terms, “to scaffold discontinuity” (p. 179).

Themes start off the “waves” at the beginning of the clauses, and News complete the waves at the ends of them. News are another kind of prominence in the clauses with the expanding information as text unfolds, and act as links to the Themes and News of the next clauses (Martin & Rose, 2003, p. 179). In Table 2, we can see the conclusion section of an effective literature review is intertwined with News closely connected to the Themes in the successive clauses. For instance, “awareness” in the New position of 1.1.3 acts as an obvious link to the Themes in 1.2.2 and 1.3.1. We can also see the construction of the invoked link in 1.3.1 and 1.3.2, with “they” being the anaphoric reference to “students”, and the notion “to better express their feelings, values and indeed personalities in L2 situations” resonates “to expand their repertoire of communicative skills”.

At this point, we have already shown how Theme and New work at the clause level, and between the clauses as connections to facilitate cohesion and coherence. The next section will look at “bigger waves”, as to how information is packaged in a paragraph, a section or stage, or in other words, how a larger scale of patterning is done in a phase of discourse with HyperTheme and HyperNew.

HyperThemes: prediction and evaluation

Writing pedagogy usually tells student writers to start every paragraph with a “topic sentence” that predicts the content of the paragraph, and end the paragraph with a summary that wraps up the content of it. Such a topic sentence can be seen as a higher level of Theme – hyperTheme – which is predictive as to “establish expectations about how the text unfolds” (Martin and Rose, 2003, p. 181). Apart from prediction, hyperThemes would also evaluate the topic drawing on appraisal resources, previewing the writer’s stance towards the topic as the text elaborates with examples and arguments (Please refer to Critical Argument for details on radiation and diffusion of attitudinal values).

The following example in Table 3 is a part of the introduction section of an effective literature review, with the hyperTheme previewing the object of study by pointing out the difficulty (“conundrum”) requiring teachers’ attention (“careful consideration”). As the text unfolds, such conundrum is further explained as the exchange of ideas in spoken English is “dynamic and unpredictable”, and teaching conversational skills is an “ultimate goal” and “responsibility” of every classroom teacher.

Table 3. HyperTheme – “topic sentence” predicting and evaluating

HyperNews: distilling information

As the HyperTheme predicts how the text unfolds, the hyperNew “wraps up” the text of a phase as the information accumulates and is distilled in the final clause of the phase. To put simply, hyperNews paraphrase or summarise the body of the paragraphs. A “sandwich structure” is formed with both the hyperTheme, which predicts the patterning of Themes in the body text, and the hyperNew, which consolidates the patterning of News. According the following example in Table 4, the hyperTheme unfolds the Themes in the body text that surround the observers “we” and the observation (“the above text”), while the hyperNew becomes the distillation of the News of the body text on the students’ failure of reproduction of the spoken text with emotional insight. Similar to hyperThemes, hyperNews are also evaluative in literature reviews as they sum up the evaluations made in the News of the body text (words in bold are the attitudinal values, and italicised the graduation values):

Table 4. The “sandwich structure” of a paragraph with the hyperTheme and the hyperNew

HyperThemes and hyperNews in larger phases of discourse act like a “frame” to give an overall picture of the way the text unfolds, that hyperThemes preview the patterning of Themes, or the “method of thematic development” (Fries, 1981 in Martin and Rose, 2005, p. 184); as information accumulates in patterns of clause News establishing its “point” (ibid), it is distilled at hyperNews as a summary.

Our scope in the next section will further extend to the “larger waves” in a literature review that extends beyond clauses and paragraphs and links up the whole text with macroTheme and macroNews.

As hyperThemes predict the methods of development of the text, the “tidal waves” that predict the occurrence of the hyperThemes are called macroThemes, which also provides an overview of how the whole text will unfold. In a more everyday terminology, for example, a “thesis statement” in argumentative essays serves just like macroThemes that gives a summary of what the text will be about.

Meanwhile, multiple layers of macroThemes can exist in academic writing, that the title, the abstract, Table of Contents, to the introduction and (sub)headings form layers of higher level Themes that connect each part of the text. Then, as the information accumulates in the body of the text, higher level News entailing distil/sum up the information at the end of the text, from conclusion to references, for instance. The layers of Themes and News are summarised in Figure 1. (Martin and Rose, 2005), that suggests

The layers of Theme construct the method of development of the text, and that this development is particularly sensitive to the staging of the genre in question. Layers of New on the other hand develop the point of the text, focusing in particular on expanding the ideational meanings around the text’s field.

(Martin and Rose, 2003, p. 185-186)

Figure 1. Layers of Themes and News

We have already seen how a text is constructed through explicit scaffolding of hierarchy of Themes and News, forming the “periodicity”. The next page will suggest a few more strategies effective writers would adopt to make a literature review coherent. They include (1) conjunctions and (2) grammatical metaphor.

Go to next section - Other resources that facilitate the cohesion and coherence of literature reviews

Primary Reading
Martin, J. R. & Rose, D. (2003). Working with Discourse: meaning beyond the clause. London: Continuum.

Other readings
Liu, M. & Braine, G. (2005). Cohesive features in argumentative writing produced by Chinese undergraduates. System, 33(4), 623-636. doi:10.1016/j.system.2005.02.002

Martin, J.R., Matthiessen, C.M.I.M. & Painter, C. (2010). Deploying Functional Grammar. Beijing: Commercial Press.