Pragmatics and Discourse Analysis
1302752
Lecture (3)
Cohesion
Cohesion
• This involves overt identifiable features, which you can learn
to recognise and name, which make up the texture of a text
and contribute to its unity.
 Its concern is the formal (but at the same time semantic)
links between clauses, how an item – a pronoun, a noun or
a conjunction – in one clause may refer backwards or
forwards to another clause.
Cohesion
Can be defined as:
 “…relations of meaning that exist within the text, and that
define it as a text.” (Halliday and Hasan 1976, 4)
 “The way certain words or grammatical features of a
sentence can connect that sentence to its predecessors (and
successors) in a text." (Hoey 1991, 3)
Cohesion
 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 1:
I have a kind neighbor. His name 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
Example 2: 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
Is the text coherent?
 Prior experience – drugs are bad for children and pregnant woman or
nursing mothers.
 Prior texts – the word WARNING. What conclusion can you draw
from the word?
 Purpose : reader (warn, inform), company (avoid lawsuit)
 Conditions of product – image of reader as intelligent
The last two are the legal aspects and commercial interests – common
corporate culture
The ability of the reader to interpret the text shows the degree of
coherence of the text – dependent on the context of the event/text.
Coherence
Coherence 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 (Butt et al. 1995: 90)
Cohesion
 A text can be cohesive but incoherent.
The process may seem complicated but actually it is not really so, as long as you
prepare things in advance and know what has to be done in order. You need
to read the manual carefully to ensure that the final result is as expected.
COMPARE WITH THIS
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
 The concept of cohesion in text is related to semantic ties
or “relations of meanings that exist within the text, and
that define it as a text”.
 Within text, if a previously mentioned item is referred to
again and is dependent upon another element, it is
considered a tie. Without semantic ties, sentences or
utterances would seem to lack any type of relationship to
each other and might not be considered text.
 E.g: “Wash and core six cooking apples. Put them into a
fireproof dish.”
 ‘them’ ? - presupposes “apples”. The pronoun ‘them’
provides a semantic tie between the two sentences, thus
creating cohesion.
Cohesion
 Halliday and Hasan classify cohesive devices into five
categories:
1. reference,
2. substitution,
3. ellipsis,
4. conjunction,
5. lexical cohesion,
Cohesion
Halliday & Hasan identify general categories of cohesive
devices that signal coherence in texts:
 Reference
 Substitution
 Ellipsis
 Conjunction
 Lexical Cohesion
Grammatical Cohesion
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;
 definite article, the.
Reference
There are two basic types of reference:
 Exophora (situational)
 Endophora (textual)
- Anaphora (to preceding text)
- Cataphora (to following text)
Reference
Exophoric reference
 exophoric reference contributes to the creation of text, in
that it links the language with the context of situation, but it
does not contribute to the integration of the passage with
another so that the two together form part of the same text.
 Example:
Child
Father
Child
Father
Child
Father
Child
: Why does THAT one come out?
: That what?
: That one
: That what?
: That ONE!
: That one what?
: That lever there that you push to let the water out.
Reference
Endophoric reference
 endophoric reference is only considered cohesive due to its
contribution to the integration of the text
 Two kinds of endophoric 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).
Reference
Cataphorphoric reference
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.
Definite Reference
The:
 has no content of its own.
 obtains its meaning by attaching itself to another item
 its most frequent use is exophoric
 may refer to something which is specific to the given
situation. The water’s too cold
 may refer to something which is specific to a community
(context of culture), the president, the baby, the piano.
 may also refer to a whole class of items: the newspapers,
the possibilities, the differences; or an individual
considered as a representative of a whole class (generic
reference): the lion, the alligator
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
(Rankema, 1993: 37). Substitution is a replacement of
language element into others in a bigger composition in
order to get clearer difference, or to explain some certain
language elements.
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
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
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.
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 Bali?
Brown
: Yes, I have
Ellipsis vs. Substitution
 Ellipsis
 Substitution
An elliptical item is one
which leaves specific
structural slots to be filled
from elsewhere
An explicit counter is used
as a place-marker for
what is presupposed (use
of pro-forms as one, do,
so)
A: What is the capital of
England?
B: London [E].
A: Mark has a crush on
Lucy.
B: Do you really think so?
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


1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
to be said to what has been said before.
Conjunction expresses one of a small number of general relations.
The main relations are ...
additive (and, or, also, in addition, furthermore, besides, similiarly, likewise,
by contrast, for instance),
adversative (but, yet, however, instead, on the other hand, nevertheless, at any
rate, as a matter of fact),
causal (so, cosequently, for, because, under the circumstances, for this reason),
temporal (then, next, finally, after that, on another occasion, in conclusion, an
hour later, at last),
continuative (now, of course, well, anyway, surely, after all) (Baker, 1992: 191).
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 words
Lexical Cohesion
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.
 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.
 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.
Lexical Cohesion
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.
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.
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
the fast train
fast food
a quick shower
a quick meal
Unnatural English...
the quick train
quick food
a fast shower
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;
COHESIVE CHAINS
 cohesive ties do not operate in isolation, but combine
together in cohesive chains
One day at this time Birkin was called to London. He was not very fixed in his
abode. He had rooms in Nottingham, because his work lay chiefly in that town.
But often he was in London, or in Oxford. He moved about a great deal, his life
seemed uncertain, without any definite rhythm, any organic meaning.
(from Women in Love by D.H. Lawrence)
In this extract we can see two major chains in operation, as follows:
a) Birkin – he – his – he – his – he – he – his
b) London – Nottingham – that town – London – Oxford
COHESIVE CHAINS
a) Birkin – he – his – he – his – he – he – his
b) London – Nottingham – that town – London – Oxford
 the links in a chain can be either grammatical (a) or lexical
(b).
 in any text, it is likely that different chains are operating
simultaneously.
 two types of chain:
identity chains (a)
similarity chains (b).
COHESIVE HARMONY
 It is what makes a text coherent,
 there must be interaction between chains;
 the presence of multiple chains does not mean on its own
that a text will be coherent (chain interaction).
TANSKANEN’S APPROACH TO LEXICAL
COHESION
 Tanskanen views cohesion as a resource which
communicators use to contribute towards coherence
 The elements of her model are as follows:
Reiteration
Collocation
1. simple repetition
2. complex repetition
3. substitution
4. equivalence
5. generalisation
6. specification
7. co-specification
8. contrast
1. ordered set
2. activity-related
collocation
3. elaborative collocation
REITERATION
 1. simple repetition
applies to items of an identical form or with a difference in
grammatical form
 2. complex repetition
concerns items which are identical but serve different
grammatical functions or are not identical but share a
lexical morpheme.
 3. substitution
substitution, like repetition, also includes pronouns
REITERATION
 4. equivalence
basically corresponds to synonymy. The use of the different
term is to acknowledge the textual basis for the
classification of items, as opposed to applying a ready-made
system.
 5. generalisation
corresponds to what other linguists refer to as
superordinates,
REITERATION
 6. specification
is the counterpart of generalisation, usually referred to as
metonymy, the parts of a whole.
 7. co-specification
refers to what are elsewhere referred to as co-metonyms or
co-hyponyms.
 8. contrast
corresponds to what in other systems is referred to as
antonymy.
COLLOCATION
Tanskanen defines this in terms of relationships established
through habitual co-occurrence.
 1. ordered set
sets such as months of the year, days of the week and colours
 2. activity-related collocation
items which relate to each other in terms of an activity: meals
– eat, ciphers – decode and car – drive
 3. elaborative collocation
catch-all category for those items which are part of neither
ordered sets nor activity relations.
PARALLELISM
 Parallelism is where elements – be they syntactic, lexical or
phonological – of one clause are repeated, often for stylistic
effect, in a following clause or clauses.
 a. One small step for man.
 One giant step for mankind.
(statement made by the first man on the moon)
 b. And so my fellow Americans: Ask not what your country can do for
you. Ask what you can do for your country.
 My fellow citizens of the world: Ask not what America will do for you,
but what together we can do for the freedom of man.
(from US President J.F. Kennedy’s inaugural speech)
PARALLELISM
Cheese and Onion Dip
Put the yoghurt and soup mix into the bowl and process
until well blended. Allow to stand for 30 minutes. Add the
cheese and seasoning and process until smoothly blended.
Transfer to a serving bowl and chill. Serve garnished
with chopped chives.
End of class 03