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

1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
Halliday and Hasan argue that coherence in a text can be
achieve by:
reference,
substitution,
ellipsis,
conjunction,
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
Brown
: Have you been to Paris?
: Yes, I have
Ellipsis vs. Substitution

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 placemarker 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?
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

1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
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)
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
Repetition
Synonyms
Hyponyms and Superordinates
Antonyms
General nouns

1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
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.
Lexical Cohesion
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.

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 superordinate 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
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•
•
•
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
English...
the fast train
fast food
Unnatural
the quick train
quick food
a quick shower
a quick meal
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;
h) question, idea – fact.
