Cohesion

by RJ Phillips

Halliday and Hasan (1976) identify two types of cohesion:

Grammatical cohesion, including reference, identification, ellipsis and conjunction. Lexical cohesion, including repetition and

collocation.

Grammatical cohesion
Reference
This often involves the use of third person pronouns (he, she, it or they). My father is a naturalised British citizen. He
Demonstrative pronouns (this, that) can be used similarly. He couldnt carry it on his own, but he knew

was born in Bombay.

there was no one around who could help him. That was the problem he faced.

Anaphoric & Cataphoric Reference

A single word can refer to not only another word, but also whole clauses or sentences. When a word refers back to somebody or something that has already been mentioned, this is called anaphoric reference, as in the example on the previous slide. References forward are called cataphoric references.

Example
In the following sentence is the reference anaphoric or cataphoric? She ended the affair with me and cited

the following reasons.

Identification
This is the use of determiners such as the, this, that in order to indicate that a noun has been mentioned previously. The first use of the noun is usually preceded by the indefinite article. A ship appeared on the horizon. When

my companion returned, I pointed the ship out to him.

Ellipsis
When elements are omitted from sentence it is called ellipsis. This becomes a cohesive device if an earlier part of the text allow us to deduce the missing elements. There were discarded clothes scattered all

over the floor, plates and cups under the bed, books and papers all over the desk. A bit of a mess.

Conjunction
The use of conjunctions and conjunctive adverbs as cohesive devices. Words used in this way include and, but, because, however, thus, although etc. Johnny has promised to turn over a new

leaf and meet his deadlines. Although I have yet to see any proof of this change.

Lexical Cohesion
Repetition At its simplest this can merely be the repetition of a single word. I have taken a long time over this decision. It Sometimes the word is not repeated but a synonym is used. He looked nervously at the damage to the

was a difficult decision to make.

car. Then gingerly ran his fingers along the scratches and indentations along its side.

Collocation
This is the tendency for certain words to occur together e.g. the adjective terraced collocates with the noun house. Collocation can apply to short expressions, such as the previous example, or longer passages of a text. In a theatre review we would expect to find words such as actor, director,

audience, cast.