ENG 434 LECTURE NOTES: WEEK 2

FIVE TYPES OF COHESION

As pointed in our last lecture, in discourse studies, much attention has been paid to the first criterion for
textuality; this criterion has to do with “cohesion”, the apparent connections in discourse. Cohesion
creates semantic links between utterances by utilising the lexical and grammatical resources of the
English language. In their book, Cohesion in English (1976), Halliday and Hasan distinguish five types of
cohesion. These are the cohesive devices of substitution, ellipsis, reference, conjunction and lexical
cohesion. (1) SUBSTITUTION is the replacement of a word, word group, or sentence segment by a
‘dummy’ word or what is known in some quarters as a substitute form. The reader or listener can fill in
the correct element based on the preceding element. Substitute forms in English include the words
‘one’, ‘same’, ‘so’, ‘not’, and ‘do’. There are three types of substitution, that of a noun, of a verb, and of
a clause. The following are examples of the various types of substitution, respectively: (a) nominal
substitution: “These biscuits are stale. Get some fresh ones”, where ‘ones’ substitutes for ‘biscuits’; (b)
verbal substitution: A: Have you called the doctor? B: I haven’t done it yet, but I will do it; (c) clausal
substitution: A: Do you skip classes? B: Of course not [I don’t skip classes]. (2) ELLIPSIS is the omission
of a word or part of a sentence. Ellipsis is closely related to substitution. Ellipsis can be described as
“substitution by zero”. In the case of ellipsis, the division that is normally used is the same as that
applied to substitution, that is, nominal, verbal, and clausal ellipsis. Let us consider the following
examples: (a) nominal ellipsis: These biscuits are stale. Those are fresh. [biscuits]; verbal ellipsis: He
participated in the debate, but you didn’t. [participate]; clausal ellipsis: Who wants to go shopping?
You? [want to go shopping?]. (3) REFERENCE is the act of referring to a preceding or following element.
Reference deals with a semantic relationship. Conversely, substitution and ellipsis deal with the
relationship between grammatical units such as words, sentence parts, and clauses. In the case of
reference, the meaning of a ‘dummy’ word can be determined by what is referred to before or after the
occurrence of the dummy word. In general, the dummy word is a pronoun, as in the following example:
“I see John is here. He hasn’t changed a bit”. But reference can also be achieved by other means, for
instance, by the use of an adverb, as in the following examples: “We grew up in the 1960s. We were
idealistic then”. (i.e., in the 1960s); “She went to the market on Sunday. No sellers were there then”.
(there is a locative adverb that refers to the market; then is a time adverbial that refers to on Sunday).
(4) CONJUNCTION is a relationship which indicates how the subsequent sentence or clause should be
linked to the preceding or the following sentence or parts of the sentence. The following are examples
of three frequently occurring relationships of addition, causality, and temporality: addition: He no longer
goes to school and is planning to look for a job; causality: He is not going back to school today because
he is sick; temporality: After the car bad been repaired, we were able to continue on our journey. (5)
LEXICAL COHESION does not deal with grammatical and semantic connections but with connections
based on the words used. Two types of lexical cohesion can be distinguished: reiteration and
collocation. (i) Reiteration includes not only repetition but also synonymy. Reiteration can also occur
through the use of a word that is systematically linked to a previous one, for example, “young” and
“old”. In general, reiteration is divided into the following five types. (a) The first type is repetition: for
example, “A conference will be held on national environmental policy. At this conference the issue of
salination will play an important role”; (b) The second type of reiteration is synonymy which refers to
sameness or similarity of meaning between two lexical items, for example: “A conference will be held on
national environmental policy. This environmental symposium will be primarily a conference dealing
with water”; (c) The third type is hyponymy which is based on the formula “X is a kind of Y”, for example,
“a rose is a kind of flower”, where rose is a hyponym of flower; for instance, “We were in town today
shopping for furniture. We saw a lovely table”; in this example, of course, a table is a kind of furniture;
(d) The fourth type is metonymy which is based on part-whole relationship, for example, head is part of
the body. Consider the following example: “The mechanic pointed out that the brakes had to be
repaired. In general, however, the car was in good condition”; here, brakes are part of a car; (e) Finally,
there is antonymy which is based on oppositeness of meaning between two lexical items, for example
“white” is the antonym of “black”. Consider the following example: “The old movies just don’t do it
anymore. The new ones are more appealing”. (ii) Collocation, the second type of lexical cohesion, deals
with the relationship between words on the basis of the fact that these often occur in the same
surroundings. Some examples are the collocational relationships between “sheep” and “wool”,
“assembly” and “politician” or “university” and “study”. Consider the following examples: “Red Cross
helicopters were in the air continuously. The blood bank will soon be desperately in need of donors” (in
this example, the “Red Cross”, “blood bank” and “donors” are collocationally related or have what is
knows as “probabilities of occurrence”); “The rabbit scurried across the road. Its speed surprised me”.
In our lecture in Week 3, we will consider aspects of the styles of discourse.