Thematization: The Staging Process

Investigations into thematic choices provide insight into the structure and function of different genres in different academic communities. There are issues with achieving coherence at the discourse level in academic texts. The staging strategy in thematic progression (TP) is like a transition marker in discourse analysis, because TP is the skeleton of an argumentative essay. Adopted from one paragraph to the next, TP shows the transition from one discourse section to another, constituting a coherent whole. Intra-sentence connectivity at the textual level is measured in the effectiveness of the type of TP, as linear, constant, or derived, and directs the comprehension process. This chapter aims to focus on the coherence, and how it impacts the essay from the sentence level to the textual level, following the connectivity between the clause-initial component and the clause-final New information. Otherwise, textual coherence, fundamental to the success of an academic paper, is difficult to achieve.