Flow of information in a mercantile contract

Abstract EN

The primary purpose behind carrying out this paper is to see how flow of information contributes to discourse coherence.

To achieve this aim, an extract taken from a scholarly published textbook entitled Elements of Mercantile Law has been analysed according to the model of text analysis proposed by Halliday (1994).

It is argued here that concepts like theme and rheme, given and new and topic and focus are basically discourse notions which serve pragmatic functions separate from the lexico-grammar of the sentence; i.e.

they play key roles in issues like cohesion, relevance and discourse organization.-