thematic progression

Thematic development refers to the way theme and rheme in the clause are developed. The theory of rhetorical structure can be defined as the strategies that follow specific ways to make writing more persuasive. The present study aimed to examine how Iraqi writers maintain cohesion in the text by analyzing the patterns of thematic progression in various rhetorical sections in an online Iraqi newspaper, Azzaman (Zaman). To carry out the study, the news articles were collected from January 2013 to June 2013. Actually, 2 opinion articles which focused on the most important political issues were taken each month, collected and analyzed. The analysis focused on the thematic progression and rhetorical structures. The results revealed that thematic progression patterns were used in every rhetorical section of the newspaper. The findings of the study showed the occurrence of thematic progression with different rhetorical patterns in writing English opinion articles and the influence of culture on the rhetorical structure.

Despite the heterogeneity of ideas regarding the definitions of genre, there are also common instances shared among scholars interested in particular aspects of the notion. Swales (1990) and Bhatia (1993) are primarily interested in the sociological and psychological aspects of genre's functioning and construction, respectively.. Swales analyzes the genre of 'article introduction', into four generic moves on the basis of the communicative intentions they serve, and Bhatia investigates the tactical aspects of their construction. The present paper, is an attempt to study the patterns of thematic development-based on Daneš(1974) proposed patterns- in such generic moves. For this purpose, 12 academic papers were analyzed for their constituent generic move structures, with respect to the thematic choices and progression inside these moves. The results indicated that each move has characteristic patterns of thematic selection and progression, which must be motivated by the global discourse topic and the communicative intention of these moves, as moves of dissimilar communicative intentions had characteristic patterns of thematic selections. In the light of the result of the experiment conducted on the teachability of generic moves, it is believed that the present study can have insightful implications for writing and reading pedagogy.