Thematic progression in Saudi postgraduate Business students’ multimodal written texts: an SF-MDA accounting discourse
Alyousef, Hesham Suleiman . 2019
Thematic progression has a significant impact on the organization of texts; hence a
text is understood and communicated effectively. Studies of multimodal business discourse
have been confined to workplace contexts, and across the fields of management
accounting, marketing, and finance. Based on Halliday's analytical tools of systemic functional
linguistics, a Systemic Functional Multimodal Discourse Analysis (SF-MDA) was
conducted. Kress and van Leeuwen's 2006 approach to the analysis of the grammar of
images was also employed in the SF-MDA in order to explore THEME and INFORMATION
structure in five international students' texts in a key topic in accounting, namely financial
statements. The participants were first-year MA accounting Saudi students enrolled in
an accounting module at an Australian university. The results revealed the frequency of
two thematic progression patterns in financial statements: constant and linear. The first
pattern is employed in accounting tables to list the corresponding numerical values. The
SF-MDA findings of the balance sheet correspond with Kress and van Leeuwen's 2006
compositional zones interpretations. Thematic progression patterns can be emphasized
in English for Business Purposes (EBP) courses since it has a major effect in maximizing
students' writing.
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