Blurb:

Fries, a major contributor to the discussion of Theme for many years, provides an account of the effect Theme and New have on our perception of written text. Based on his 30 years study of Theme, Fries summarises the considerable advances that have been made and, synthesizing previous work, proposes a number of key considerations in investigating Theme. The chapter as a whole is thus designed as an attempt to frame an agenda for future research on the structure-assigning aspects of the textual metafunction.