7.

4 Cohesion

Cohesion refers to the linkage of meanings in a text which constructs a text (Halliday M.A.K
& Hasan. R, 1976). As a concept beyond grammar and lexis, and sound and letters, cohesion
links words together to give meaning to a text, numerous cohesive devices and relevant
vocabularies are used in written text to facilitate the linkage both within and across
sentences. In this chapter,grammatical cohesion and lexical cohesion will be introduced as
well as various cohesive devices.

7.4.1 Grammatical Cohesion

With the complex system of English, cohesion can be broken down into grammatical
cohesion and lexical cohesion. Grammatical cohesion refers to the use of grammatical items
to create cohesion, such as using cohesive devices and sentence structures.

7.4.1.1Cohesive devices

Cohesive devices has four major categories, namely reference, substitution, ellipsis,
conjunction.

i) Reference

Reference is divided into three types, anaphoric, cataphoric, and exophoric, which it
describes the way words refer to other words in the text (Wang, 2011, p.69)

a) Anaphoric:

Anaphoric reference looks backwards to an item at the context.

e.g. Dr. Wang is handsome. He is nice, too.

"He” refers to Dr. Wang.

b) Cataphoric:

Cataphoric reference looks forwards to an item at the context.

e.g. That guy is nice. His name is Dr. Wang.

“That guy” refers to Dr. Wang; “His” refers to “That guy’s”.

c) Exophoric:
 Exophoric looks to an item not mentioned in the text. It is usually used when the
context is known. Shared world of knowledge or experience may also be
assumed understood by readers beyond text(Wang, 2011,p.70).

e.g. The dog is barking.

The meaning of “The” cannot be determined without knowing the context. For
example, “the dog” can mean “someone’s dog” or a specific dog, to name but a few.

ii) Substitution

Substitution refers to substituting an item by another word, to avoid making the text
repetitious.

e.g. Are we going to the park or not?

The phrase “not going to the park” is subtituted by a single word “not”. This makes the
sentence briefer and less tedious to reader or listeners.

iii) Ellipsis

Similar to substitution, ellipsis also makes a text less lengthy, however by a different way,
to omit the words other that using a word to substitute. Therefore, it is also recognized as
“zero substitution” that nothing is substituted but still a meaning is created.

e.g. Is Maggie the girl sitting there?

Yes, she is.

The complete answer to the question should be “Yes, she is the girl sitting there”.
However, we can express the complete meaning already, only by saying “Yes, she is.”

iv) Conjunction

Different from reference, substitution, and ellipsis, conjunctions implies some meanings
itself to link items [Link] are four types of conjuctions: additive; adversative;
causal; temporal.

a) Additive conjunction: to add information or to elaborate upon an item

e.g furthermore, additionally, moreover, etc

 b) Adversative conjunction: to compare ot state two or more items with reverse
meanings

e.g. but, however, yet

c) Causal conjunction: to describe the cause-effect relationship of two or more items

e.g. therefore, since,consequently

d) Temporal conjunction: to describe time relationship of items

e.g. after, before, until

Here is a three-sentenced story constructed using the four types of conjunctions. Enjoy!

ENG1324 is fun and interesting, yet (adversative), challenging. The wikibook project was
difficult, therefore (causal) I hated this course. After (temporal) finishing the project, I loved
ENG1324 again!

Grammatical cohesion has great emphasis in cohesive devices, however, it is necessary we

know that using grammatical cohesion is not enough for constructing a text.

e.g. EdUHK is where I study in. Before 2016,it was still called HKIEd. I love eating apples,
sweet ones especially. Furthermore, grapes are sweet, oranges too.

In the above example, all four cohesive devices are used, yet, the short text’s idea to be
conveyed is extremely unclear, it is because of the lack of lexical cohesion. In the following
subchapter, more about lexical cohesion will be covered.

7.4.2 Lexical cohesion

As texts are always context based, words related to each other are used throughout texts.
To relate the words to a previous item, a general noun has to appear in a text’s beginning.
General nouns are significant in a text that it penetates the whole text, and gives a direction
to the vocabulary choices, which is the emphasis of lexical cohesion.

[Link] General Noun

General noun is a noun that generalizes that main idea of the whole text. It can be a small
set of nouns,the following are some simple examples:
 Human noun e.g. man, boy, girl, person…

Non-human e.g. creature

animate

Fact noun e.g. Concern, thought

Place e.g. Hong Kong, Earth

1. Human noun

e.g. man, boy, girl, person…

2. Non-human animate

e.g. creature

3. Fact noun

e.g. Concern, thought

4. Place

e.g. Hong Kong, Earth…

[Link] Lexical chain

Lexical chain is a pattern of the way the words in a text are related. By knowing the lexical
chain, readers can understand the text easier. There are some relationships between the
words.

1. Simple repetition.

The word is simply repeated.

e.g. Hong Kong … Hong Kong… Hong Kong…

 We can notice that the text talks about Hong Kong.

2. Synonym.

Words of very similar meanings.

e.g. tasty… delicious… mouth-watering…

We can tell that the text talks about food.

3. Antonym

Words of opposite meanings

e.g. meaningful… meaningless…

We know that the text may be comparing some alternatives.

4. Hyponym and hypernym

Hyponym is the word within a semantic field while hypernym is the semantic field.

e.g. liver… lungs… organs…

“Organs” is the semantic field while liver and lungs are one of the organs, we can
tell that the text is related to organs.

5. Same word field

Words of the same category (word field)

e.g. learning commons… education… Bed(English Language)… EdUHK…

The words are all related to EdUHK. We can tell that the text is about EdUHK.

7.4.3 Summary

To summarize, cohesion is one of the major components of contructing a text as it creates

meaning of a text. Cohesion can be categorized into grammatical cohesion and lexical
cohesion. While grammatical cohesion focuses on cohesive devices and lexical cohesion
focuses on the vocabulary choices, they are of paramount impotance in achieving cohesion.