Confusing Mode With Hyper-Theme

Doran, Martin & Herrington (2024: 195):

Within this excerpt, there are other smaller demarcations. For example, in the first paragraph, the marked Theme In the mid-1970s, indicates that there will be a shift – in this case to a story about Carl Woese (who is introduced in this clause). The first sentence as a whole functions as a smaller Hyper-Theme for this story … 

This first paragraph tracks Woese’s argument, focusing primarily on Woese himself. The paragraph break then leads to a new Hyper-Theme that introduces other biologists’ perspectives (Many prominent biologists ridiculed or simply ignored Woese’s work) – which involves establishing a new participant chain involving countering authorities (Many prominent biologists, Ernsts Mayr, the biologist, The journal Science). Put in terms of the model of mode we are introducing here, each of the opening lines – starting with In the mid-1970s, For decades, and Many prominent biologists – all function to demarcate distinct chunks of information. But they do this within the larger chunk we have already established that focuses on archaea more broadly. This illustrates that there is not just a single linear chunking of information in a text, but rather that texts can be organised around a hierarchy of demarcation – whereby smaller chunks of information are organised within larger chunks of information.

Reviewer Comments:

To be clear, in SFL Theory, mode is the part language is playing in terms of the culture. Chunks of information, on the other hand, are language, as too is Martin's discourse semantic function of hyper-Theme, which is his rebranding of the notion of 'topic sentence' in writing pedagogy.