MODULE 2

Meaning and discourse in English

Cohesion + Coherence

Lecture 9
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 Cohesion and coherence

A sequence of sentences is a text when

there is some kind of dependence between
the sentences. The task of textual analysis is
to identify the features that cause this
dependence.

These features have been classified in terms

of COHESION and COHERENCE

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 Cohesion

COHESION refers to linguistic features

which link sentences together and are
generally easy to identify.

Here are some examples .

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Conjunctive relations
He ate the cornflakes. Then he ate the
packet
Finally, I would like to thank all of you
for coming.
No students arrived. So he went home.
He bought a hat and some sun cream.
But he still got sunburnt.

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CONTRAST But
Yet
Although / though
Despite
On the other hand
On the contrary
However
Anyway
well
.

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RESULT So
Therefore
As a result
Consequently
As a consequence

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TIME Then
Firstly
When
After
Later
Earlier
before

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 Anaphoric/cataphoric relations

What do you think of this: Johns getting married

cataphoric relation (looking forward)

Johns getting married. What do you think of that?

anaphoric relation (looking backwards)

These are features which cannot be interpreted except

by reference to some other feature in the text
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 SUBSTITUTION

Ive lost my bag. Have you seen it?

the pronoun it replaces bag

One feature replaces a previous word or expression.

Pronouns are a good example of cohesive elements by
substitution

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 ELLIPSIS
A structure is omitted and can only be recovered from

the previous discourse.

Where did the cat go? Out of the window.

In this example It went is omitted from Out of the

window and we recover it by inference from where did
the cat go?
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 REPETITION

Repetition is when an expression, or part of an

expression is repeated. This is very common
in speech (see lesson on characteristics of
. speech). The repetition of tense and other
syntactic patterns is very important for
cohesion.

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LEXICAL COHESION

There is a lexical relationship when one

lexical item has a structural relationship
with another, for example synonymy,
hyponymy, antonymy. Register
(vocabulary related to a particular
discipline) is also very important for
lexical cohesion.

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COMPARATIVE COHESION
In comparative cohesion something is
always compared with something else in the
discourse. Words of identity (e.g. same as),
similarity (e.g. very like), difference (e.g.
unlike); distinctness (e.g. totally different)
are important for comparative cohesion.
Something is always compared with
something else in the discourse

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COHERENCE
The textual world (what the text is about) is made
up of concepts and relations. Coherence concerns
the way in which concepts and relations are
mutually accessible and relevant. In other
words, a coherent text is one which is easy for us
to understand because it is easy for us to make a
mental representation of it. Remember that it is
possible for a text to be cohesive but not
coherent. The Faulkner text is full of cohesive
elements but it is not easy to understand.

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