Tarbiat Modares University Language Related Research 2322-3081 16 6 2026 01 21 A Discourse Analysis of Contemporary Persian Story Texts Based on the Theme Factor in Textual Metafunction from Linguistic Perspective: Halliday and Matthiessen's Functional Grammar Approach (2014) A Discourse Analysis of Contemporary Persian Story Texts Based on the Theme Factor in Textual Metafunction from Linguistic Perspective: Halliday and Matthiessen's Functional Grammar Approach (2014) 297 323 7102 10.48311/LRR.16.6.10 FA Seyyed Abbas Navabi Sohi PhD candidate in universal linguistics, South Tehran Branch, Islamic Azad University, Tehran, Iran; ORCID: 0009-0009-5466-6485 Ferdows Aghgolzadeh Professor in linguistics, Tarbiat Modares University, Tehran, Iran. Ahmad Mohseni Associate professor in Teaching Language, South Tehran Branch, Islamic Azad University, Tehran, Iran Journal Article 2025 07 13 The present article aims to analyze six contemporary short stories based on Halliday and Matthiesen's systemic functional grammar framework (2014). In functional grammar, the message and textual meaning of clauses will not be revealed to the reader without identifying the topical themes and the discourse factors influencing to highlight them. Thus a perfect interpretation of the message will not be obtained. The study answers the question how the thematic structure in clauses helps highlight and convey the author's messages. The study hypothesis is: the thematic structure conveys the author's message by highlighting the topical themes by means of syntactic tools. the study corpus contains six contemporary short stories, comprising 3736 clauses. The descriptive- analytic method were used to analyze all the 3736 clauses based on thematic structure in textual metafunction. The data analysis showed that in unmarked clauses the topical themes were used in their natural place as subjects, mostly being participants to preserve and maintain the topic. However, when there were good discourse reasons such as new events, topic change and certain meaning, mostly preposed adjuncts were used as topical themes in marked declarative clauses. while the process was used as topical theme in imperatives to show the participants social status. Therefore, the readers by using the thematic structure and identifying the topical themes can understand the author's intended textual meaning and his message in unmarked and marked clauses. 1. Introduction Achieving a successful communication in language involves writer's organization of the meanings as messages in clauses and texts and reader's identification of them in order to have a perfect interpretation of the messages of the texts. Therefore, one of the concerns of the readers has always been how to uncover the textual and discoursal meanings of the texts especially literary texts. Fortunately, since 1970s functionalism has had significant influence on analyzing literary texts and since 1994 it has been used as an approach in analyzing texts. Based on textual metafunction in functional grammar, thematic systems organize meanings in clauses and texts. Thematic structures have the responsibility of organizing meanings in clauses and topical themes have the responsibility of organizing meanings in clauses and texts so that they convey the intended messages of the clauses. Accordingly, this study aims to analyze the texts of the six Persian short stories based on ideational theme factor in textual metafunction to identify the topical themes and discoursal factors influencing them. To do this, the present paper has been carried out based on ideational theme factor in the framework of Halliday and Matthiessen's functional grammar (2014) and descriptive-analytic method. Research Question(s) The research question can be formulated as follows: 1.How does the thematic structure in clauses help highlight and convey the author's messages? 2. Literature Review There are some studies on ideational themes and a wealth of material on textual and interpersonal ones, for example, Kavusinejad (2002) investigating theme-rheme structure in 1100 declarative clauses from articles and books showed that writers used 393 simple theme and 685 multiple themes in their text for the purpose of cohesion. Kazemi(2009) by investigating theme structure in scientific and literary genre concluded that theme -rheme structure can be analyzed in three layers: in simple clauses in one layer, in coordinate-non coordinate clauses in two layers and in complex clauses in three layers. Arabzouzani and pahlevannezhad (2014) investigated 100 clauses of Nahj-albalagheh jihad lecture based on the textual metafunction of functional theory and showed that more than 70% of the clauses had multiple themes which led to the cohesion and coherence of the text. Moreover, selection of the same theme in consecutive clauses meant maintenance and progression of the main topic. Besides, marked themes were used to change the framework of the text. Omiyati (2019) investigated different types of mood and themes in 88 clauses of Trump's speech based on Halliday's functional approach. He showed that in one type of classification unmarked themes were used in 44 clauses and marked themes were used in 38 clauses. In another classification, simple themes were used in 57 clauses and multiple themes were used in 25 clauses. He concluded that Trump had to use a lot of material to convey his message. Most of the above researches demonstrated that textual and interpersonal themes were used for the purpose of achieving cohesion and in some cases coherence of the texts. Besides, those studies were mostly structural and formal-based. Nevertheless, the advantages of the present study compared to the above studies are that beside using topical themes instead of textual and interpersonal ones to study the texts for the purpose of conveying the messages, this research is discourse-based and has investigated the discourse factors influencing the use of marked and unmarked topical themes in the six short Persian story texts. 3. Methodology The corpus of this study consisted of six contemporary short stories from the works of famous Persian writers including “ A City Like Paradise” (Daneshvar, 2015), “ Three Drops of Blood” (Hedayat, 2002), “ Cooking Samanu” (Ale Ahmad, 2004), “My China Doll” (Golshiri, 2015), “Mirror” (Dolatabadi, 2005), “Two Days” (Vafi, 2018) during 1932-2012. The research was conducted using a descriptive- analytic method. There were 3736 clauses in the stories. Using a data analysis sheet based on Halliday and Matthiessen’s functional grammar (2014) on thematic system, the clauses of the stories were analyzed to identify, sort, tally the ideational themes for frequencies and to calculate the percentage of each variable. The results were then shown in the tables and discussed to find an answer to the question. 4. Results The findings revealed that the writers used the unmarked clauses in 91% of the cases as a predominant ideational theme and marked clauses in 9% of the cases in the six short Persian stories. The findings also showed that the authors used the participants as predominant topical theme in 90.75% of the cases in declarative clauses, adjuncts and complements as ideational theme other than subjects in 6.75% of the cases and the process in 2.5% of the cases as theme in imperative clauses. This showed that in most cases the writers by highlighting and repeating the participants as topical theme not only preserved and continued the themes but also provided the necessary context to develop and convey their intended messages. In some cases, they also used adjuncts and complements as marked themes to change the topic and to introduce new characters and events to the stories. Still, they used sporadically process themes in imperatives not only to give commands and to recommend but also to show the social status and distance of the characters. All in all, by highlighting the topics as ideational themes, all the messages were revealed by following them through theme-rheme structure and discoursal context in order to have a perfect interpretation of the messages. The present article aims to analyze six contemporary short stories based on Halliday and Matthiesen's systemic functional grammar framework (2014). In functional grammar, the message and textual meaning of clauses will not be revealed to the reader without identifying the topical themes and the discourse factors influencing to highlight them. Thus a perfect interpretation of the message will not be obtained. The study answers the question how the thematic structure in clauses helps highlight and convey the author's messages. The study hypothesis is: the thematic structure conveys the author's message by highlighting the topical themes by means of syntactic tools. the study corpus contains six contemporary short stories, comprising 3736 clauses. The descriptive- analytic method were used to analyze all the 3736 clauses based on thematic structure in textual metafunction. The data analysis showed that in unmarked clauses the topical themes were used in their natural place as subjects, mostly being participants to preserve and maintain the topic. However, when there were good discourse reasons such as new events, topic change and certain meaning, mostly preposed adjuncts were used as topical themes in marked declarative clauses. while the process was used as topical theme in imperatives to show the participants social status. Therefore, the readers by using the thematic structure and identifying the topical themes can understand the author's intended textual meaning and his message in unmarked and marked clauses. 1. Introduction Achieving a successful communication in language involves writer's organization of the meanings as messages in clauses and texts and reader's identification of them in order to have a perfect interpretation of the messages of the texts. Therefore, one of the concerns of the readers has always been how to uncover the textual and discoursal meanings of the texts especially literary texts. Fortunately, since 1970s functionalism has had significant influence on analyzing literary texts and since 1994 it has been used as an approach in analyzing texts. Based on textual metafunction in functional grammar, thematic systems organize meanings in clauses and texts. Thematic structures have the responsibility of organizing meanings in clauses and topical themes have the responsibility of organizing meanings in clauses and texts so that they convey the intended messages of the clauses. Accordingly, this study aims to analyze the texts of the six Persian short stories based on ideational theme factor in textual metafunction to identify the topical themes and discoursal factors influencing them. To do this, the present paper has been carried out based on ideational theme factor in the framework of Halliday and Matthiessen's functional grammar (2014) and descriptive-analytic method. Research Question(s) The research question can be formulated as follows: 1.How does the thematic structure in clauses help highlight and convey the author's messages? 2. Literature Review There are some studies on ideational themes and a wealth of material on textual and interpersonal ones, for example, Kavusinejad (2002) investigating theme-rheme structure in 1100 declarative clauses from articles and books showed that writers used 393 simple theme and 685 multiple themes in their text for the purpose of cohesion. Kazemi(2009) by investigating theme structure in scientific and literary genre concluded that theme -rheme structure can be analyzed in three layers: in simple clauses in one layer, in coordinate-non coordinate clauses in two layers and in complex clauses in three layers. Arabzouzani and pahlevannezhad (2014) investigated 100 clauses of Nahj-albalagheh jihad lecture based on the textual metafunction of functional theory and showed that more than 70% of the clauses had multiple themes which led to the cohesion and coherence of the text. Moreover, selection of the same theme in consecutive clauses meant maintenance and progression of the main topic. Besides, marked themes were used to change the framework of the text. Omiyati (2019) investigated different types of mood and themes in 88 clauses of Trump's speech based on Halliday's functional approach. He showed that in one type of classification unmarked themes were used in 44 clauses and marked themes were used in 38 clauses. In another classification, simple themes were used in 57 clauses and multiple themes were used in 25 clauses. He concluded that Trump had to use a lot of material to convey his message. Most of the above researches demonstrated that textual and interpersonal themes were used for the purpose of achieving cohesion and in some cases coherence of the texts. Besides, those studies were mostly structural and formal-based. Nevertheless, the advantages of the present study compared to the above studies are that beside using topical themes instead of textual and interpersonal ones to study the texts for the purpose of conveying the messages, this research is discourse-based and has investigated the discourse factors influencing the use of marked and unmarked topical themes in the six short Persian story texts. 3. Methodology The corpus of this study consisted of six contemporary short stories from the works of famous Persian writers including “ A City Like Paradise” (Daneshvar, 2015), “ Three Drops of Blood” (Hedayat, 2002), “ Cooking Samanu” (Ale Ahmad, 2004), “My China Doll” (Golshiri, 2015), “Mirror” (Dolatabadi, 2005), “Two Days” (Vafi, 2018) during 1932-2012. The research was conducted using a descriptive- analytic method. There were 3736 clauses in the stories. Using a data analysis sheet based on Halliday and Matthiessen’s functional grammar (2014) on thematic system, the clauses of the stories were analyzed to identify, sort, tally the ideational themes for frequencies and to calculate the percentage of each variable. The results were then shown in the tables and discussed to find an answer to the question. 4. Results The findings revealed that the writers used the unmarked clauses in 91% of the cases as a predominant ideational theme and marked clauses in 9% of the cases in the six short Persian stories. The findings also showed that the authors used the participants as predominant topical theme in 90.75% of the cases in declarative clauses, adjuncts and complements as ideational theme other than subjects in 6.75% of the cases and the process in 2.5% of the cases as theme in imperative clauses. This showed that in most cases the writers by highlighting and repeating the participants as topical theme not only preserved and continued the themes but also provided the necessary context to develop and convey their intended messages. In some cases, they also used adjuncts and complements as marked themes to change the topic and to introduce new characters and events to the stories. Still, they used sporadically process themes in imperatives not only to give commands and to recommend but also to show the social status and distance of the characters. All in all, by highlighting the topics as ideational themes, all the messages were revealed by following them through theme-rheme structure and discoursal context in order to have a perfect interpretation of the messages.

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