There are few occasions where marked Theme instances fit into more than one function category of the 6 proposed marked Theme functions described above. Fitting into more than one function happens in case of Function D, ‘the repair meaning’ and Function F, ‘the refocusing’ because these two functions are sort of variants as described in 5.2, p. 112 especially on occasions of the instant repair meaning in which no real breakdown in communication happens as in Example 5.7 above. 3 instances of marked Theme fit into Functions D and F. The three instances occur in the dialogue of group five and are presented in Example 5.11 below. In the example, the reintroduced information ‘old mine’ is elided in the second and third marked Themes because the three marked Themes occur in sequence. The full data script of group five is presented in Appendix K.
Example 5.11
672) IG5: so you go down, and then you turn to the right, and sort of go diagonally up a bit and you should go back past a miner (long pause). Do you have a miner?
[to… to] the right of your old mine 673) IR5: [no]
674) IR5: I have an old mine and then I have mountains, on the right and then like swamp and cactus
675) IG5: ah, ok so um, I guess I need to get you to the X at the bottom rather than… than… ok, alright, so you go… next to the old …old mine what have you got?
676) IR5: um, to the right of the old mine I have mountains and below I have a swamp and diagonally I have a cactus
677) IG5: oh, ok so they’re complete different layout ok so um, right you go below the old mine, and then you go right, and we still on the sort of top line of the paper or picture as it were
The function of the three instances is considered as refocusing function to describe the location of landmarks and to repair meaning. Yet, they are technically described as instances of refocusing function as the landmarks, ‘mountains’, ‘swamp’ and ‘cactus’ in which their locations to be described with relation to the reintroducing information ‘old
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of Example 5.11. The reason why these 3 instances are considered as instances of repair meaning is that they help to resolve the discrepancies because of the absence of ‘miner’ from the instruction receiver’s map (line 673) as the extract above shows.
Two other instances of marked Theme denote the reintroducing function to refocus on the reintroduced information to clarify that the landmarks are found on the map represented by the first marked Theme (line 494) and to confirm the locations of the landmarks represented by the second marked Theme (line 513) of Example 5.12 below,
miner’ and ‘swamp’ to confirm the location of ‘rocks’. The example is taken from the
dialogue of group four; the full data script of the dialogue is presented in Appendix K.
Example 5.12
464) IG4: ok, because I have a miner between the old… right in the middle between the old mine and the mountains but a little bit closer to the mine
. .
470) IG4: and then um so what do you have below kind of on the next?
471) IR4: well, I got kind of two columns, a left and a right column. And then… so on the left column it goes start old mine, swamp, cottage, stone giant, hills, farm 472) IG4: ok
473) IR4: ok
474) IG4: so I don’t have… I have a swamp, I don’t have cottage and I don’t have… what was the other one?
. .
494) IG4: ok so between… ok let’s see…I’m trying to think what’s the best way to do this, um so between the swamp… ok… so on my map there is like the old mine and the swamp
495) IR4: ok .
.
509) IG4: um it’s… so do you have rocks? 510) IR4: no, I don’t have rocks too
511) IG4: I have rocks right under miner, so miner would be kind of in the middle of the page, right
512) IR4: yeah yeah
513) IG4: right under miner kind of almost parallel but little lower than the
swamp I have rocks
514) IR4: ok
Interestingly, map task data collected in the current study shows also instances of marked Themes’ occurrence in clusters where Circumstantial Adjuncts “pile up at the beginning of the clause” (Matthiessen, 1992: 53) as in Example 5.12 above (line 513). 5 instances
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out of the 59 marked Themes appear in clusters in the map task dialogue; 3 perform refocusing Function, F and the other two repair meaning function, D. The five instances are listed in Appendix W. In Example 5.12 above, ‘right under miner kind of almost
parallel but little lower than the swamp’ is an example of refocusing function as noted
already. The occurrence of ‘right under miner’, ‘kind of almost parallel’ and ‘but litter
lower than swamp’ in cluster gives precise description on the location of the missing
‘rocks’ from the IR4’s map (line 513) which is the reason of refocusing on ‘miner’ and ‘swamp’. Example 5.13 below taken from the dialogue of group seven is an instance of repair meaning function and it shows the occurrence of the spatial elements in succession within the marked Theme ‘so directly across the mushroom house almost to the other
side of the page but not quite’. In this example, IR7 gives extra details on the location of
the ‘hills’ on her map by uttering ‘directly across from the mushroom house’ with ‘almost
to the other side of the page’ and ‘not quite’ (line 1126) to describe precisely the location
of the ‘hills’.
Example 5.13
1120) IR7: do I go under the mushroom house or over the mushroom house? 1121) IG7: under the mushroom house
1122) IR7: ok wow ok under the mushroom house ok 1123) IG7: do you have a duck pond?
1124) IR7: no 1125) IG7: ok
1126) IR7: so directly across [from the mushroom house] almost to the
other side of the page but not quite, I have hills
1127) IG7: [aha] 1128) IG7: yeah I have them too
1129) IR7: ok good,….
In Examples 5.12 and 5.13, the successive thematic spatial elements have the effect of “contextualization” (Matthiessen, 1992: 53). In Example 5.13 for instance, the context of describing the location of ‘hills’ by taking the location of the ‘mushroom house’ as a point of departure provides relevant clues or details (i.e. almost to the other side of the page) and (not quite) with relation to establishing common grounds between the interlocutors to effortlessly describe the locations of the ‘hills’.
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