Phnology

Phnology

  • Submitted By: mandychik
  • Date Submitted: 10/27/2008 9:44 AM
  • Category: English
  • Words: 751
  • Page: 4
  • Views: 599

It is a text taken from an online travelogue written by an exchange student about his stay in Hong Kong. For the register variables, the field is a text from an online travelogue which is about the story of how he ended up in Hong Kong, the experience he had during his stay, and also his feeling for Hong Kong. The agent roles of the text are the writer himself and the readers, the social distance is distant, and the hierarchy is unequal as the writer has the information and the readers can choose to read or not. The mode of the text is written and informal; the writer adapts a friendly tone throughout the whole passage.


As for the three metafunctions, the moods of the clauses are basically declarative. The participant is mainly “I” as it is used many times in the text. And there are mainly material and relational processes, as most of the verbs are doing verbs, such as do and spend, and being verbs such as is and was. Also, most of the themes in the text are unmarked themes as the subject I is often in the initial position.


In the passage, theme plays an important role in bringing out the content of the text, both at a text and clause level. When analyzing at a text level, hyperTheme tells us where we are going in a phase, while hyperNew tells us where we have been. HyperTheme predicts what each phase will be about; new information accumulates in each clause and is distilled into the final sentence.


In the text, hyperTheme is located in the first sentence, “The story of how I ended up in Hong Kong is rather interesting”. It tells us what the passage is going to talk about, that is the reason why he was in Hong Kong, the purpose of his stay, what he had experienced, and how he felt about the city. And throughout the whole passage, the writer writes and adds information based on these topics.
While hyperTheme is located at the beginning, hyperNew is located in the last sentence of the text, “They say that college is the best time of...