'...And Yes, I was in the Building' (9-11-2001): Thematic Selections in Personal Recounts of a Tragedy

Michael Alexander Kirkwood Halliday's (1994) notion of theme is applied in the analysis of four recounts of personal experience with the events of September 11, 2001. After quoting Halliday's definition of the theme as an element of clause structure, quantitative data are tabulated for various types of themes to demonstrate the typical grammatical & lexical-semantic properties of themes in the genre of personal accounts that has a distinctive field, tenor, & mode: (1) simple & multiple themes, (2) marked ideational, predicated, ellipted, & clausal themes, (3) textual & interpersonal themes, (4) human participants as themes, (5) nonpeople as themes, & (6) circumstances as marked ideational themes. It is concluded that themes in personal accounts are structured to present sequential events, prioritizing when things happened, where events took place, & who was involved. The relevance of theme analysis to teaching writing compositions is stressed. 6 Tables, 1 Appendix, 13 References. Z. Dubiel