Thematic perspectivization and meta-schematic information in the discourse of scientific atheism: Synergizing systemic functional linguistics and social cognition

present study explores the cognitive basis of the Theme/Rheme structure in text and its potential for applicability at the macro level of discourse analysis. Towards this end, the study follows a synergetic methodology of systemic functional linguistics and social cognition, whereby the terms Theme and perspective are conflated under the concept of thematic perspectivization and the terms Rheme and schema under the concept of meta-schematic information. The current methodology proposes a systematic correlation between the elements of perspectivizer, perspectivizee, and perspectivized, on the one hand, and self-schema, person schema, and role schema, on the other. The latter types of schema have been demonstrated to be linguistically explicit in the New information falling within the Rheme structure in text. The data used for analysis is Richard Dawkins’ (2006) polemical book The God Delusion, which typically represents a science-oriented type of atheistic discourse. The study has reached two findings. First, thematic perspectivization and meta-schematic information are fully-fledged discursive practices as their analysis demonstrates both the micro level of Theme/Rheme analysis and the macro level of schema analysis. Second, the systemic functional model of linguistic co-textual analysis can be augmented by incorporating the social-cognition model of contextual analysis.
Keywords:
Meta-schematic information; perspective; Rheme; schema; scientific atheism; social cognition; systemic functional linguistics; thematic perspectivization; Theme