Cohesion and Coherence

Cohesion and Coherence

Cohesion means to hold together. It means that texts have the right order with the clear process. In addition to unity, coherence plays an important role in making a text read well.

A coherent text consists of interrelated sentences which move smoothly one for another.

To organize any text to be coherent, the writers need to keep their readers well informed about what they are and where they are going

Cohesion and Coherence

Coherence: it is the resources within language that provide continuity in a text, over and above that is provided by clause structure and clause complexes that bind one sentence and another using formal ties.

Example: I have a kind neighbor. He is Marks Spencer. He works

in a hospital. It is located not so far from his house. Mr. Spencer has lived there for more than ten years with his family. They are Mrs. Witty and two sons named Brian and Denis.

Cohesion and Coherence

Example: label on aspirin bottles

WARNING: keep this and all medication out of reach of

children. As with any drug, if you are pregnant or nursing a baby, seek the advice of a health professional before using this product. In the case of accidental over-dosage, contact a physician or poison control center immediately.

Cohesion and Coherence

Incoherent text

We spent our holidays in Fiji. The beaches there are beautiful. We stayed at a hotel by the beach. This is a town where you can get fresh fruits. Fruit contain vitamins and these are essential for a healthy life. So is regular exercise, like jogging. Try to exercise every day.

Cohesion and Coherence

Halliday and Hasan argue that coherence in a text can be

achieve by: 1. reference, 2. substitution, 3. ellipsis, 4. conjunction, 5. lexical cohesion,

1. Reference

Reference refers to how the speaker or writer introduces participants and then keeps track of them once they are in the text (Eggins, 1994:95).

Reference items in English include personal pronouns,

such as I, you, he, she, it; possessive adjectives, such as my, your, his, her; possessive pronouns, such as mine, yours, his, hers; demonstratives, such as this, that, these, those; and the definite article, the.

1. Reference

There are two basic types of reference: - Anaphora (to preceding text) - Cataphora (to following text)

1. Reference

- Anaphoric reference: the subsequent items can only be interpreted with reference to the initial phrase of the first sentence. Typically, anaphoric reference refers to a participant mentioned nearby (one or two sentences previously), but sometimes it may refer back to an item mentioned many pages before.

- Cataphoric reference: it points the reader foward, it draws us further into the text in order to identify the elements to which the reference items refer (Nunan: 1993: 22).

1. Reference

Example: It’s as certain as death and taxes. Presidents have

periods of popularity and then periods of not so much. There are more than tough periods than honeymoons for them. Now all eyes are on the current President of the U.S.A. Barrack Obama, his honeymoon with the U.S. public is seemingly on the wane.

2. Substitution

A substitution is the replacement of a word (group) or sentences segment by a “dummy” word. The reader can fill in the correct element based on the preceding sentences.

Substitution is replacement of language element into others in a bigger composition in order to get clearer difference, or to explain some certain language elements.

2. Substitution

There are three types of substitution: Nominal: ◦ Which book do you want? I’ll take the red one.

Verbal: ◦ I have coffee every morning and he does too.

Clausal: ◦ A: I am so ugly, B: Okay, if you say so.

2. Substitution

Examples There are some new tourism resorts in Indonesia. These

ones’ve become the most attracting places to visit. John : Bill says you went to Bali last week. Brown : So did you! Smith : Are father and mother going to have

vacation to East Java? Brown : I think so

3. Ellipsis

omission of a word or part of a sentence. occurs when some essential structural elements are omitted from a

sentence or clause and can only be recovered by refering to an element in the preceding text (Nunan, 1993: 25).

Accoding to Halliday and Hasan (1976: 144) ellipses occur when something that is structurally necessary is left unsaid, there is a sense of incompleteness associated with it.

3. Ellipsis

There are also three kinds of ellipsis: nominal, verbal and clausal

ellipsis

My father likes to go to a crowded tourism place, but I like a peaceful.

John : Have you been to Paris? Brown : Yes, I have

Ellipsis An elliptical item is one

which leaves specific structural slots to be filled from elsewhere

A: What is the capital

city of England? B: [the capital city of

England is] London.

Substitution An explicit counter is

used as a place-marker for what is presupposed (use of pro-forms as one, do, so)

A: Mark has a crush

on Lucy. B: Do you really think

so?

Ellipsis vs. Substitution

Conjunction

a relationship which indicates how the subsequent

sentence or clause should be linked to the preceding or the following (part of the sentence)

Conjunction signals the way the writer wants the reader to relate what is about to be said to what has been said before.

Conjunction

Conjunction expresses one of a small number of general relations. The main relations are ...

1. additive (and, or, also, in addition, furthermore, besides, similiarly, likewise, by contrast, for instance),

2. adversative (but, yet, however, instead, on the other hand, nevertheless, at any rate, as a matter of fact),

3. causal (so, cosequently, for, because, under the circumstances, for this reason),

4. temporal (then, next, finally, after that, on another occasion, in conclusion, an hour later, at last),

5. continuative (now, of course, well, anyway, surely, after all)

Conjunction

Examples My family likes to spend holliday by visiting some places

and they also like to go fishing in the sea. It was raining very hard yesterday. However, my

classmates went to the exhibition. I am afraid I’ll be home late tonight. Nevertheless, I won’t

have to go in until late tomorrow. Chinese tea is becoming increasingly popular in

restaurants, and even in coffee shops. This is because there is belief that tea has several health-giving properties.

Lexical Cohesion

the use of the same or similar or related words in successive sentences.

Example: the words the poor creature in “The donkey died; the

poor creature has worked hard all his life”.

the lexical devices can cross short or large pieces of the discourse.

the same word or a synonym is used and repeated throughout the discourse.

related words (such as superordinate or general words) are used, and this repetition of the same concept strengthens the cohesion of the discourse.

Lexical Cohesion

Kinds: reiteration and collocation.

Reiteration, where the same word is repeated. Some writers try to avoid this by the use of what is called

elegant variation, this involves using devices as 1. Repetition 2. Synonyms 3. Hyponyms and Superordinates 4. Antonyms 5. General nouns

Repetition There was a cat on the table. The cat was smiling. No one can be perfectly free till all are free; no one

can be perfectly moral till all are moral; no one can be perfectly happy till all are happy.

Lexical Cohesion

Repetition is a word or words which has been stated, and then it is repeated again. We can tie sentences or paragraphs together by repeating certain key words from one sentence to the next or one paragraph to the next. It is in the case of the clearness of the main idea of the writing (Kilborn and Kriesi, 1995).

Example:

A conference will be held on national environmental policy. At this conference the issue of sanitation will play an important role.

Synonyms

He got a lot of presents from his friends and family. All the gifts were wrapped in colored paper.

The meeting commenced at six thirty. But from the moment it began, it was clear that all was not well.

Lexical Cohesion

Synonym is the relationship between two words which have the same meaning

Examples: A conference will be held on national environmental

policy. This environmental symposium will be primarily a conference dealing with water.

He got a lot of presents from his friends and family. All the gifts were wrapped in colored paper.

The meeting commenced at six thirty. But from the moment it began, it was clear that all was not well.

Superordinate (Hyponyms) Yesterday, a pigeon carried the first message from

Pinhurst to Silbury. The bird covered the distance in three minutes.

Brazil, with her two-crop economy, was even more severely hit by the Depression than other Latin American states and the country was on the verge of complete collapse.

Lexical Cohesion

Hyponym Hyponym is defined as a sense relation between words

(sometimes longer phrases) such that the meaning of one word (or phrase) is included in the meaning of the other (Hurford & Heasley, 1983).

It is a semantic relation between specific and general meaning, between general class and its sub-classes.

The item referring to the general class is called super-ordinate and those referring to its sub-classes are called hyponyms.

Examples: My father went to a furniture exhibition last night.

He wanted to buy an antique table.

Yesterday, a pigeon carried the first message from Pinhurst to Silbury. The bird covered the distance in three minutes.

Brazil, with her two-crop economy, was even more severely hit by the Depression than other Latin American states and the country was on the verge of complete collapse.

Lexical Cohesion

Antonym Antonym is an opposite in meaning while metonym is a

term used to describe a part-whole relationshiop between lexical items.

Example: The front rows are available for old men and women.

Young boys and girls are seated in the back rows.

Lexical Cohesion

• A collocation is an expression consisting of two or more words that correspond to some conventional way of saying things.

• a sequence of words or terms that co-occur more often than would be expected by chance.

• In other words, two or more words that often go together.

• The words together can mean more than their sum of parts (The Times of India, disk drive) – Other examples: hot dog, mother in law

• Examples of collocations – noun phrases like strong tea and weapons of mass

destruction – phrasal verbs like to make up, and other phrases like the

rich and powerful. • Collocations usually cannot be translated into other

languages word by word. • Collocations are not necessarily fully compositional in

that there is usually an element of meaning added to the combination. Eg. strong tea.

Natural English Unnatural English... the fast train the quick train fast food quick food a quick shower a fast shower a quick meal a fast meal

General Nouns And Signalling Nouns Halliday and Hasan (1976: p. 274) describe this type of cohesion

as ‘a small set of nouns having generalized reference within the major noun classes, those such as “human noun”, “place noun”, “fact noun” and the like.’

examples and classes: a) people, person, man, woman, child, boy, girl – human; b) creature – non-human animate; c) thing, object – inanimate concrete count; d) stuff – inanimate concrete mass; e) business, affair, matter – inanimate abstract; f) move – action; g) place – place; h) question, idea – fact.