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CohesionCoherence HallidayHasan Baker

Cohesion links elements in a text and creates connectedness through various devices like reference, substitution, ellipsis, conjunction, and lexical cohesion. Halliday and Hasan identified five main cohesive devices: reference, substitution, ellipsis, conjunction, and lexical cohesion. Cohesion is expressed through vocabulary as in lexical cohesion and grammar as in devices like substitution and ellipsis. While cohesion provides surface links between parts of a text, coherence refers to deeper conceptual relations that give a text meaning and make it comprehensible to readers. A text can be highly cohesive through linguistic devices but still lack coherence at the conceptual level.

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44 views1 page

CohesionCoherence HallidayHasan Baker

Cohesion links elements in a text and creates connectedness through various devices like reference, substitution, ellipsis, conjunction, and lexical cohesion. Halliday and Hasan identified five main cohesive devices: reference, substitution, ellipsis, conjunction, and lexical cohesion. Cohesion is expressed through vocabulary as in lexical cohesion and grammar as in devices like substitution and ellipsis. While cohesion provides surface links between parts of a text, coherence refers to deeper conceptual relations that give a text meaning and make it comprehensible to readers. A text can be highly cohesive through linguistic devices but still lack coherence at the conceptual level.

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eleonora rizza
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© © All Rights Reserved
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Theoretical module – LM94 year one (L.

Santini)

Cohesion and text organization


Cohesion links together elements in a text, generating text connectedness. Language is a coding system
comprising three levels of coding: the semantic system (meaning); the lexico-grammatical system (grammar and
vocabulary); the phonological and orthographic system (sounding/spelling and punctuation). In Cohesion in
English, (1976), Halliday and Hasan describe text connectedness in terms of reference, substitution, ellipsis,
conjunction, and lexical cohesion. According to Halliday and Hasan, these explicit clues make a text a text (1976:
13). Cohesion occurs «when the interpretation of some element in the discourse is dependent on that of another»
(1976: 4). The following five cohesive devices are distinguished:
(i) Reference* – two linguistic elements are related in what they refer to (textual reference) – patterns of
reference: repetition, synonym, superordinate, general word, and pronominal reference
e.g. Jan lives near the park. He often goes there.
(ii) Substitution – a linguistic element is not repeated but is replaced by a substitution item
e.g. Deirdra loves strawberry ice-creams. She has one every day.
(iii) Ellipses – one of the identical linguistic elements is omitted
e.g. All the children had an ice-cream today. Eva chose peach. Arthur had orange and Finn too.
(iv) Conjunction – a semantic relation is explicitly marked between what is about to be said and what has
been said before – main types: additive, adversative, causal, temporal, various
e.g. Jillian walked into town, because she wanted to meet Frank.
(v) Lexical cohesion – two or more elements share a lexical field – two main categories: reiteration,
repetition of lexical items (repetition, synonym, superordinate, general word) and collocation, a pair
of lexical items associated with each other within a language
e.g. Why does this little boy wriggle? Girls don’t wriggle (Halliday, Hasan, 1976: 285);
It was hot. Dan was lining up for an ice-cream.
Note: Reference* in semantics denotes a direct relations between words and extra-linguistic objects

Cohesion is expressed partly through vocabulary, as in Lexical cohesion, and partly through grammar. The
distinction between grammatical cohesion and lexical cohesion is a matter of degree and Halliday and Hasan
suggest that Conjunction is on the borderline of the two types - mainly grammatical but with a lexical
component. Substitution is the replacement of one linguistic item by another. Ellipsis is also a kind of
Substitution where one linguistic item is replaced by nothing. Ellipsis is the omission of an item. There are three
types of Substitution:
Nominal Substitution – one/ones, the same (e.g. I’ll have two poached eggs. - I’ll have the same.)
Verbal Substitution – do, also called pro-verb (e.g. I don’t believe it. - Neither do I.)
Clausal Substitution – so, not (e.g. Has everyone gone home? I hope not. // Is this mango ripe? – It seems
so. // Everyone seems to think he’s guilty. If so, no doubt he’ll offer to resign. / We should recognize the
place when we come to it. Yes, but supposing not then what do we do? // ‘May I give you a slice?’ she
said. ‘Certainly not’ the red queen said.)
Substitution and Ellipsis are grammatical relationships between linguistic forms rather than linguistic forms and
their meanings; therefore, the details are highly language-specific. A text holds together as it relies on semantic
and structural relationships.

«The grammatical system of each language will itself encourage the use of certain devices as opposed to others.
The textual norms of each genre will further suggest certain options and rule out others» (Baker 2011: 198) that
may be grammatically/textually acceptable in other genres. Cohesion is a surface network of lexical, grammatical
and other relations, which provide links between various parts of a text. Coherence is the network of conceptual
relations, which underlie the surface of a text. Both concern the way linguistic elements are connected to each
other. In the case of Coherence, they are connected by virtue of conceptual or meaning dependencies as perceived
by language users. Generally speaking, cohesive markers do not necessarily create a coherent text. Consider the
following example: Cats have four legs. The cat is on the mat. Mat has three letters. This is a highly cohesive text but
incoherent, (Baker: 231).

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