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COHESION AND COHERENCE

There are two types of connections that tie discourse together: 1. Endophoric connections (which have their manifestation in the discourse itself) ⇒cohesion 2. Exophoric connections (which can be made based on information/knowledge outside the discourse) ⇒coherence

A. COHESION Cohesion is the resources within language that provide continuity in a text, over and above that is provided by clause structure and clause complexes. Halliday and Hasan (1976) in Coulthard (1974) claims that cohesion is formed by the formal ties, which bind one sentence to another. Two types of cohesion: a. Grammatical cohesion b. Lexical cohesion

a. Grammatical Cohesion There are four headings of grammatical cohesion based on Halliday and Hasan (1976). They are reference, substitution, ellipsis, and conjunction.

1. Reference Reference is one kind of cohesive ties in texture. 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). Its elements establish semantic relationship between them, in which one of the elements provides the other with the meaning. According to Halliday and Hasan (1976) there are two basic types of reference. a. Exophora (situational)

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b. Endophora (textual): anaphora (to preceding text) and Cataphora (to following text) There are several lingusitic items which can create reference cohesion. Halliday and Hasan (1976: 37-39) devide reference cohesion into personal reference; demonstrative reference and definite article; and comparative reference.

a.) Personal Reference Personal reference is reference by means of function in the speech situation through the category of person. Nunan (1993: 23) states that personal reference items are expressed through pronouns and determiners. They serve to identify individuals and objects that are named at some other point in the text. It relates to Halliday and Hasan (1976: 48) that the third person is only herently cohesive, in that a third person form typically refers anaphorically to a preceding item in the text. First and second person forms do not normally refer to the text at all; their referents are defined by the speech roles of speaker and hearer. The category of personal reference includes: 1) personal pronouns, e.g I, me, you, him, she, he, her, we, us, they, them, it; 2) possessive determiners, e.g my, yours, their, its, our, his, her; 3) possessive pronouns, e.g. mine, yours, hers, theirs, ours. The following is one example of personal reference  Mr. John is an English teacher. All of his students like him very much. The word his and him in the second sentence refer to Mr. John. The word his is a personal reference which refers to the third person singular. The certain person that is Mr. John is followed by its pronoun, so that it is called as anaphoric reference that is the implicit encoding device follows its reference.

b.) Demonstrative Reference

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Demonstrative reference is reference by means of location, on scale of proximity. It is essentially a form of verbal pointing. The speaker identifies the referent by locating it on a scale of proximity. The categories of demonstrative reference include three classes namely: nominative demonstrative (this, that, these, those), circumstantial demonstrative (here, there, now, then) and definite article (the). These demonstratives occur extensively with anaphoric function in all varieties of English. The demonstratives have some relevance to cohesion, in that they partially determine the use of these items in endophoric (textual) reference.  My family got frightened when we saw an accident in our trip. That was the most terrifying accident I’ve ever seen.  My parents were having lunch, my brothers and I walked around to see some lions and elephants. Those are my brothers’ favorites animals.  I spent my holiday in my uncle’s house in Bali. I do like staying there. The word that in the first example is demonstrative reference which demonstrates the first sentence. Then, the word those in the second example (2) refers to some lions and elephans. Finally, the word there in the thurd example refers to my uncle’s house in Bali. These can also be called as anaphoric references. It is because they presuppose some items in the previous sentences. The demonstrative reference is also called locational reference (Eggins, 1994: 98). It does not involve the identification of a participant in a text (a person or thing), but the identification of a location in time or space. Locational referents to nearby time or space (e.g. here, now, these days, at the moment, above, below) are frequently retrieved exophorically, while locational items refering to distant time or space (e.g. there, then) are often endophorically retrieved.

c. Comparative Reference

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Comparative reference is indirect reference by means of identity or similiarity. With comparative reference, the identity of the presumed item is retrieved not because it has already been mentioned (or will be mentioned) in the text, but because an item with which it is being compared has been mentioned (Eggins, 1994: 98). The system is as follows (Halliday, 1976:76):  The most tragic accident that I have ever seen was the accident happened last year. The phrase the most tragic accident in the sentence above is comparative reference (in superlative degree). Any comparison includes as least two things that are being compared and any comparative attached to one entity or concept thus implies the existence of the other entity or concept. Thompson (1996: 151) explains that comparison happens not only in the text but also out of context (situational). It is called exophoric reference. Nevertheles, references which have contribution to the integration of the texts considered cohesive.

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 (Rankema, 1993: 37). 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. It is an item or items replaced by another item or items. There is a distinction between substitution and reference in which subtitution is a realization in the wording rather than in the meaning. Substitution is a relation between linguistic items such as words and phrases in the level of lexicogrammar (Halliday and Hassan, 1976: 89). It resembles reference in being potentially anaphoric and constituate a link between parts of a text. They also explain that since substitution is a grammatical relation, a relation in the wording rather than in the meaning, the different types of substitution are defined grammatically rather than

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semantically. There are three types of substitution: nominal, verbal and clausal substitution. The followings are the examples of each:  There are some new tourism resorts in Indonesia. These ones’ve become the most attracting places to visit. From the sentence above, we can see that the word ones is substitution of new tourism resorts. This substitution is considered as nominal substitution.  John Brown

: Bill says you went to Bali last week. : So did you!

The clause did is substitution because the complete sentence actually you went to Bali. The word did is presupposed by certain verb went. It belongs to verbal substitution.  Smith Brown

: Are father and mother going to have vacation to East Java? : I think so.

In the sentence above, the word so presupposes the whole clause Father and mother are going to have vacation to East Java. The word so above belongs to clause substitution.

3. Ellipsis Ellipsis is the omission of a word or part of a sentence. It 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. The information is understood, but not stated. Like substitution, ellipsis is a relation within the text and in the great majority of instances the pressuposed item is present in the preceding text.

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Ellipsis is also normally anaphoric relation in the level of words and structures. The difference between substitution and ellipsis is that in the former a substitution counter occurs in the slot and the pressuposed item is replaced, whereas in ellipsis the slot is empty. It is often called as substitution by zero. Like the substitution, there are also three kinds of ellipsis: nominal, verbal and clausal ellipsis.

a. Nominal ellipsis Nominal ellipsis means the omission of a noun Head, for example:  My father likes to go to a crowded tourism place, but I like a peaceful. In the second sentence, the word tourism place is not mentioned after the word a peaceful. However, any competent English speaker can easily retrieve the meaning of a peaceful as a peaceful tourism place. Then, the adjective a peaceful functions as Head.

b. Verbal ellipsis Verbal ellipsis involves the omission of the verb Head while the auxiliary element remains explicit. For example:  John

: Have you been to Bali?

Brown : Yes, I have The complete response must be Yes, I have been to Bali. In the dialogue, the speaker does not use long response. It is clearly understood that the speaker does not want to confuse to his/ her interlocutor.

c. Clausal ellipsis Clausal ellipsis represents the omission of a part or whole clause. For example:  John

: Who will go shopping today?

Brown : Mom

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In that example, the whole clause is omitted. The complete response should be Mom will go shopping today. In the spoken language the speaker does not need to use the complete clause when answering questions introduced by a question word.

4. Conjunction One explanation to the concept of conjunction comes from Baker (1992). He asserts that conjunction is a relationship which indicates how the subsequent sentence or clause should be linked to the preceding or the following sentence or clause by using cohesive ties which relate a sentence, a clause or a paragraph to each other. Conjunction signals the way the writer wants the reader to relate what is about to be said to what has been said before. Conjunction expresses one of a small number of general relations. The main relations (Baker, 1992: 191) are: 1.) Additive (and, or, also, in addition, furthermore, besides, similiarly, likewise, by contrast, for instance) 2.) Adversative (but, yet, however, instead, on the other hand, nevertheless, at any rate, as a matter of fact) 3.) Causal (so, cosequently, for, because, under the circumstances, for this reason) 4.) Temporal (then, next, finally, after that, on another occasion, in conclusion, an hour later, at last) 5.) Continuative (now, of course, well, anyway, surely, after all)

The following are the examples of each type of conjunction:  My family likes to spend holliday by visiting some places and they also like to go fishing in the sea.

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The word 'and' and 'also' in the sentence above are conjunctions which connect the first and the second clause. Those words signal the presentation of additional information. These conjunctions are additive.  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. The relationships signalled by 'however' and 'nevertheless' are adversative because the information in the second sentence of each text moderates or qualifies the information in the first.  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. In this type of conjunction, the relationship is one of cause and consequence. Here, the word because signals the causal and effect relation. The first sentence shows the effect and the second is as the cause.  I went over to my friend’s house and I said ‘We’ll go for a walk’. And we went far away and I said ‘I don’t know our way home. And then we kept on walking and we were very hungry. After that we saw a village and we went to talk to them and we said ‘We’re hungry’. Then, they gave us some food and we thanked them and we went walking off. And then we stopped and sat down. And then we saw a giant and I sreamed ‘Cooee’. (source Butt et al. 1994: 94) Temporal relationship exist when the events in a text are related in terms of the timing of their occurrance. Here the temporal conjunction and then, then and after that.

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 When my father said that we would end our vacation, I felt so sad, after all I could understand that it was not good time to stay any longer in case of bad weather. There is continuation in the above sentence. It uses after all to signal the continuative matter.

b. Lexical Cohesion The types of cohesion we have discussed so far all involve grammatical resource/ items (conjunction, reference items, substitutes items) and grammatical structure. Cohesion also operates within the lexical zone of lexicogrammar by choosing of lexical items. Lexical cohesive devices refer to the role played by the selection of vocabulary in organizing relation within a text (Baker, 1992: 202). It does not deal with grammatical and semantic connection but with the connection based on the words used. Meanwhile, Nunan (1993: 28) says that lexical cohesion occurs when two words in a text are semantically related in some way. They are related in terms of their meaning. There are two kinds of lexical cohesion: reiteration and collocation. In general, reiteration is devided into five types. They are repetition, synonym, hyponym, metonym and antonym. 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). Synonym is the relationship between two words which have the same meaning. 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 super-ordinate and those referring to its sub-classes are

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called hyponym. Antonym is an opposite in meaning while metonym is a term used to describe a part-whole relationshiop between lexical items. The second type of lexical cohesion, collocation, deals with the relationship between words on the basis of the fact that these often occur in the same surrounding (Rankema, 1993: 39-40). The followings are examples of each type of lexical cohesion.  A conference will be held on national environmental policy. At this conference the issue of sanitation will play an important role. In the sentences above the word conference occurs twice as the indication that they are repeated.  A conference will be held on national environmental policy. This environmental symposium will be primarily a conference dealing with water. In the first sentence, the word conference is repeated in the second sentence with its synonym, symposium.  My father went to a furniture exhibition last night. He wanted to buy an antique table. Furniture is the superordinate word for the word table as its subordinate. (Hyponym)  At its six-month checkup, the brakes have to be repaired. In general, however, the car is in good condition. Brake is as the part of car as the whole. (Metonym)  The front rows are available for old men and women. Young boys and girls are seated in the back rows. From the example above, the word old is the opposite of young. (Antonym)

B. Coherence

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Coherence 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. A writer needs to inform well about his/her composition. He needs to give clear information what the text is about. The readers need to know about the topic and the content about the text produced by the writers. Coherence itself does not guarantee that the text read well. The writer needs to organize them in a good way. 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 (Butt et al. 1995: 90). Based on the Introduction to Functional Grammar, there are grammatical resources to signpost the way through clauses, clause complexes and paragraph, from beginning to the end of a text. According to Butt et al. (1995: 90), the first signpost must be at the beginning of a text, paragraph or clause. It tells the readers what the writer has in mind as a starting point. The writers use the first position in the clause to signal their readers what the message is about. Coherent texts make sense to the reader. In Text and Context: Explorations in the Semantics and Pragmatics of Discourse, Teun A. van Dijk (p. 93) argues convincingly that coherence is a semantic property of discourse formed through the interpretation of each individual sentence relative to the interpretation of other sentences, with "interpretation" implying interaction between the text and the reader. Coherence (from Lat. “cohaerere” – to stick together) can be understood in a wide sense and in a narrow sense. In a wide sense, coherence is the semantic structure which helps to unite several sentences into a holistic text. In a narrow sense, coherence is the connection brought about by reader’s/listener’s knowledge that helps him/her to understand any given discourse (e.g. through the knowledge of the context in which the discourse is unfolding). Coherence has to do with mental

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processes and cultural knowledge rather than any explicit discourse markers such as deictic words or linking words (Bussmann, 1998). Examples:  Tom: May I have some more? Helen: Yes, of course, any time you want more, just go ahead. In this example, Tom does not mention what exactly he wants, but through the context of the situation Helen knows that he is speaking about perogies (Tom has just finished a plate of perogies). Thus, despite the fact that Tom is not mentioning explicitly what he wants, his discourse is coherent as is Helen’s (who is not mentioning perogies either).  [A newspaper article headline and a lead to it] A NEW AMAZING RECORD SET. Solomon University students have cooked the biggest perogi. A whole weekend has been spent in hard work. Similarly, in example 2, there are no textual indicators pointing at the relationships between the sentences. However, it is still easy to understand the text based on the semantics and logical order in which the sentences are organized. Therefore, this text is coherent.

3. The Difference between Cohesion an Coherence The important difference between coherence and cohesion is that coherence relies on semantics of a given text as well as cultural knowledge and the overall context in which discourse is unfolding. There is no explicit manifestation of textual coherence in a text itself. Coherence is rather deduced from a text. Cohesion, in turn, starts with concrete textual elements which are then built upon to produce the effect of cohesion. Cohesion is often manifested through the use of such “devices” as pronouns (e.g. I, he, she, it) and deictic words (e.g. here, there, then). Examples:

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 Cohesion and Coherence "My favourite colour is blue. I like it because it is calming and it relaxes me. I often go outside in the summer and lie on the grass and look into the clear sky when I am stressed. For this reason, I'd have to say my favourite colour is blue." This sentence is both coherent and cohesive.  Cohesion with No Coherence "My favourite colour is blue. Blue sports cars go very fast. Driving in this way is dangerous and can cause many car crashes. I had a car accident once and broke my leg. I was very sad because I had to miss a holiday in Europe because of the injury." As you can see, there is plenty of cohesion here. The sentences connect clearly together but if you read the paragraph, it really makes no sense - we start talking about blue and we finish talking about a holiday in Europe. There is no coherence in this sentence.  Coherence with No Cohesion "My favourite colour is blue. I'm calm and relaxed. In the summer I lie on the grass and look up." This is more difficult to understand but basically this lack of cohesion means a lack of sufficient connectors to join the ideas together. If I try hard I can understand what the person is saying: a short answer, an explanation, an example; however the sentences don't fit together.

CONCLUSION Cohesion and coherence are terms used in discourse analysis and text linguistics to describe the properties of written texts.

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Cohesion is "the glue that sticks a sentence to another in a paragraph or a paragraph to another in a text." A text can be cohesive through the use of the following devices: reference, substitution, ellipsis, conjunction and lexical cohesion. Coherence means that the text is easy to read and understand because the text follows a certain kind of logical order and the organization of ideas is systematical and logical. Cohesion refers to connectivity in a text while coherence refers to how easy it is to understand the writing.

REFERENCES https://arifsuryo.wordpress.com www.criticism.com

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www.quora.com www.uwb.edu

CONTENT

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CONTENT

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COHESION AND COHERENCE ..................................

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1. The Definition of Cohesion and Its Classification

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2. The Definition of Coherence and Its Classification

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3. The Difference Between Cohesion and Coherence

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CONCLUSION

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REFERENCE

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DISCOURSE ANALYSIS “COHESION AND COHERENCE”

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Jihan Khairunisa 1613042019

ENGLISH STUDY PROGRAM LANGUAGE AND ART DEPARTMENT TEACHERS TRAINING AND EDUCATION FACULTY LAMPUNG UNIVERSITY 2019

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