Cohesion and coherence
Cohesion and Coherence
Kitty Zhang
Nov. 22, 2004
Yule describes that coherence together with cohesion leads us to distinguish connected texts which make sense from those which do not (1996: 141). However, one significant point that we have to always bear in mind is that intrinsic understanding is far more important than mechanical learning.
Cohesion
The fact that most people can easily distinguish between what is called a text and a rare collection of sentences lies in that there are 'ties' that bind all the sentences together in a text. Yule defines cohesion as 'the linguistic ties and connections which exist within texts' (1996:140). The definition itself is abstract, so in order to make my students have a general understanding of 'cohesion', I provide them with some pairs of distinctively contrasting examples of cohesive and non-cohesive texts. It is not difficult to find some cohesive texts and make the corresponding non-cohesive samples out of them. Take the following two texts as an example (Example 2 is ready-made):
(Example 1) A non-cohesive text:
I tried to get to sleep. My neighbour owns a acoustic guitar and an electric guitar. He likes to play the electric guitar. I had to get up at the crack of dawn for work the next day. The other neighbour and his wife must be more tolerant than me. I don't know what his other neighbour thinks about it. I don't know what his wife thinks about it. My neighbour plays the guitar quite badly. I wish my neighbour would take up another hobby.
(Example 2) A cohesive text:
I'm trying to get to sleep but he's at it again, my neighbour, playing the guitar. He actually owns two guitars, a simple acoustic one and an expensive electric one. But he seems to prefer to play the electric one late at night when I'm trying to get to sleep and have to get up at the crack of dawn for work the next day. I don't know what his other neighbour thinks about it, or his wife for that matter. They must be more tolerant than me. The problem is, not only does he play the guitar very loudly, but he also plays it quite badly. I really wish he would take up another hobby altogether, or at least find a quieter musical instrument to play. (Cutting 2000: 213)
It is more effective to distribute to students the non-cohesive text before the cohesive one. After reading the two texts, students are asked about which they feel they can easily follow and which they cannot, and are encouraged to find the features of the easily-followed text, which usually can satisfactorily elicit some, though not all, of the types of cohesive ties. They will be aware that it is these ties that produce cohesion.
Reference
Reference is one of the most important types of cohesive ties, which is 'the act of using language to refer to entities' (Cutting 2000: 212). Halliday and Hasan (1976: 33) establish two basic types of reference:
References to elements within the text are called endophoric references. The most frequently encountered and most easily recognized endophoric reference is anaphora --- 'the subsequent reference to an already introduced entity' (Yule 1996: 131). In Example 2, students are more likely to point out in the first place the anaphoric reference through pronouns which are cohesive with preceding nouns, for example, 'my neighbour/he' and 'the guitar/it'. They can also understand the cataphoric reference by recognizing in the first sentence that 'he' refers forward to the referent 'my neighbour' and 'it' refers to the activity of 'playing the guitar'.
Deixis
Reference to the situation, or what Yule calls physical context, outside of the text is called deixis, also known as exophoric reference. Words used to point to a person, a location and a time are examples of person deixis, place deixis and time deixis respectively (Yule 1996: 130). For intermediate students, it is not necessary to be familiar with these terms. Teachers can use terms such as pronoun and adverbial which are common in language teaching.
Other types of cohesive ties
Cohesion can also be achieved by ellipsis and substitution. 'Ellipsis is the omission of elements normally required by the grammar which the speaker/writer assumes are obvious from the context and therefore need not be raise (McCarthy 1991: 43).' In ellipsis, a noun head, a verb head or a part of the clause can be left out. In 'He sings folk songs. I'll never forget the first he sang to me', the noun head 'folk song' is omitted in the second sentence. In 'Will you come to the party? ---Yes, I will', the verb head 'come' is omitted in the answer. In example 2, 'or his wife for the matter' replaces the full noun clause version 'or what his wife thinks about it for that matter'. Substitution is regarded as a halfway point between reference and ellipsis. Instead of being omitted, nouns, verbs and clause elements are substituted by 'one(s)', 'do', 'so/not', 'same', etc., as illustrated in examples (McCarthy 1991: 45):
I offered his a seat. He said he didn't want one.
Did Mary take that letter? She might have done.
Do you need a lift? If so, wait me; if not, I'll see you there.
She chose the roast duck; I chose the same.
Yule also mentions three other types of cohesive ties --- lexical cohesion, connectors and verb tenses, all of which can be introduced in examples.
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