COHESION & COHERENCE

Text Analysis

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Grammar in text analysis

• Text and discourse analysis is one area of linguistics, the systematic study of language

• The best way to understand what text and discourse analysis is about is to compare it with another area of linguistics: grammar

• Grammar (or syntax) deals mainly with the structure of individual sentences. For instance, the rules of English grammar tell us that if some words are combined as in example 1, it would be acceptable and in example 2 is unacceptable1. If you want advice or practical help with health matters, ask

your family doctor, district nurse or health visitor2. Visitor health or nurse district, doctor family you ask,

matters health with help practical or advice you want if.• Grammar, then, is basically how words are combine to form

sentences• The focus is not “correct grammar” but describing how

people do speak and write

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Text and Discourse

• A text or a discourse is a stretch of language that may be longer than one sentence . Thus it’s about how sentences are combined to form texts. Compare sentence 1 and 2 below. Are they grammatical? Do the sentences in the text hang together?1. It’s practically impossible to restrain children when

they get to grips with technology. Which is why the computer equipment used in schools has to be designed and built to a standard above and beyond the normal call of duty. A standard that’s set by Research Machines.

2. Which is why the computer equipment used in schools has to be designed and built to a standard above and beyond the normal call of duty. It’s practically impossible to restrain children when they get to grips with technology. A standard that’s set by Research Machines.

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Cohesion and coherence

o Halliday and Hasan (1976)o Cohesion is linguistically explicit and signals

underlying semantic relationships between text elements.

o Coherence: underlying organiser which makes the words and sentences into a unified discourse that conforms to a consistent world picture. A coherent text is meaningful, unified, and gives the impression of "hanging together".

Cohesion Cohesion is continuity in word and sentence structure. Cohesion is limited to the linguistic to the linguistic markers

that cue the comprehenders on how to build such coherence representation.

Cohesion emphasizes discourse as product. There are five different types of cohesion: reference,

substitution, ellipsis, conjunction, and lexical cohesion.

However, these have been further refined and the five categories have been reduced into four, with substitution being seen as a sub category of ellipsis.

It is the non-structural resources for discourse. The cohesive devices themselves do not create the

relationships in the text; what they do is to make the relationship explicit. 5

Referential Cohesion [1]

• There are two kinds of reference: Exophora (Situational) and Endophora (Textual). Textual reference consists of Anaphora & Cataphora.

• Referential cohesion consists of (1) anaphoric (preceding the text) & cataphoric

reference (following the text) (2) personal, demosntrative, and comparative reference

• Anaphoric reference points the reader or listener ‘backwards’ to a previously mentioned entity, process, or state of affairs. Cataphoric reference points the reader or listener forward—it draws us further into the text in order to identify the elements to which the reference item refer. (see the example)6

Reference

Fig of Reference 8

Referential Cohesion [2]

Halliday & Hasan (1976) identify three sub-types of referential cohesion—personal, demonstrative, and comparative.

Personal reference items are expressed through pronoun and determiners. e.g. I, you, my, ours, etc.

Demonstrative reference is expressed through determiners and adverbs. e.g. this, those, here, then, etc.

Comparative reference is expressed through adjectives and adverbs and serves to compare items within text in terms of identity or similarity. e.g. same, identical, different, better, less, etc. 9

Substitution & Ellipsis

Ellipsis is described as a form of substitution in which the original item is replaced by zero. e.g. My axe is too blunt. I must get a sharper one.

There are three types of substitution—nominal (one, ones, same) , verbal (do) and clausal (so, not).

Ellipsis occurs when some essential structural element is omitted from a sentence or clause and can only be recovered by referring to an element in the preceding text. e.g. This is a fine hall you have here. I’ve never lectured in a finer.

As with substitution, there are three types of ellipsis— nominal (Which hat will you wear? This is the best), verbal (What should she have done? Told the police), and clausal (Is it Tuesday today? I don’t know). 10

Conjunction Conjunction differs from reference, substitution,

and ellipsis in that it is not a device for reminding the reader of previously mentioned entities, action, and state of affairs. In other words, it is not what a linguist call an anaphoric relation. However, it is a cohesive relation because it signals relationship that can only be fully understood through reference to other parts of text.

There are 4 types of conjunction—temporality, causality, addition, and adversity (contrast).

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Lexical Cohesion [1] Lexical cohesion occurs when two words in text are

semantically related in some way—in other words they are related in terms of their meaning. In Halliday & Hasan (1976), the two major categories of lexical cohesion are reiteration and collocation.

Reiteration includes repetition, synonym or near synonym, superordinate, and general word. Reiteration fulfills a similar semantic function to cohesive reference. (see example)

Collocation can cause major problems for discourse analysis because it includes all those items in a text that are semantically related. In some cases, this makes it difficult to decide for certain whether cohesive relationship exists or not. 12

Lexical Cohesion [2] The problem arise because collocation is expressed

through open rather than closed class items. Closed lexical items include all grammatical words—such as pronouns, conjunction, and preposition—membership of which is finite.

Many lexical relationship are text as well as context-bound. This means that words and phrases that are related in one text may not be related in another.

The background knowledge of the reader or listener plays a most obvious role in the perception of lexical relationship than in the perception of other types of cohesion.

Collocational pattern, for example, will only be perceived by someone who knows something about the subject at hand. The text-bound nature of many lexical relations, and the role of language user in perceiving these creates a problem for linguist concerned with providing a semantic account of lexical cohesion. 13

Categories of discourse cohesion

Relationship between cohesion andcoherence

o Cohesion and coherence are related notions, but they are clearly distinct. There are two types of views concerning their relationship.

• a) Cohesion is neither necessary nor sufficient to account for coherence.

• A: That's the telephone.• B: I'm in the bath.• A: O.K. (Widdowson, 1978, p. 12)• b) Cohesion is necessary, though not sufficient in the

creation of coherent texts. In other words, cohesion is a crucial though not exclusive factor contributing to coherence, since it facilitates the comprehension of underlying semantic relations.

Coherence• The term cohesion applies to the surface structure

of the text and the concepts and relation underlying its meaning.

• Coherence is a continuity in meaning and context. • Coherence can be reserved for conceptual

relationship that comprehenders use construct a coherent mental representation accomodated by what is said in discourse.

• Coherence emphasizes discourse as process.• Cohesion alone is not sufficient for the

interpretation of the discourse. Comprehenders generate inferences on the basis of background knowledge and discourse constraints. 16

Coherence

• A coherent text has certain words and expression in it which link the sentences together

• Cohesive devices are only one factor in making a text coherent.

• Just as important in making a text coherent are the intentions, expectations, and the backgroud knowledge of the text producer and text receiver

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Cohesion & Coherence

• Cohesion & coherence can be divided into local (microstructure) & Global (macrostructure).

• Local cohesion & coherence concern the interrelatedness between adjacent discourse segment.

• Global cohesion & coherence concern the interrelatedness of longer span of discourse.

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Some areas of investigation

o How does cohesion contribute to coherence in native speech/writing?

o How does cohesion contribute to coherence in non-native speech/writing?

o Comparison of cohesion in native and non-native speech/writing;

o Comparing cohesion in different genres (newspaper articles, novels, informal letters, informal dialogues, etc.);

o Cohesion in child language and adult language;o Cohesion at the different levels of language proficiency;o Cohesion in different languages;o Cohesion in disordered vs. normal talk;o Cohesion in translations;o Teaching cohesion to non-native speakers.