Coherence and Cohesion 1209732373735606 8
Coherence and Cohesion 1209732373735606 8
Coherence and Cohesion 1209732373735606 8
2012/5/2
Coherence
Coherence can be thought of as how meanings and sequences of ideas relate to each other. Typical examples would be general> particular; statement> example; problem> solution; question> answer; claim> counter-claim. It lays emphasis on meaning.
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mark-up of coherence devices *I couldn't seem to find the right room [the topic sentence: all other sentences in this paragraph support this idea of confusion and disorientation] none of *them [pronoun referring to "room"] had the number designated on my pass *First [enumeration], *I [pronoun] wound up at the Department of Verification, *then [enumeration & transition of addition] the Department of Misinformation, *then [enumeration & transition of addition] some clerk from the Pressure Section advised me to try level eight, *but [transition of contrast] on level eight they ignored me.
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none of them had the number designated on my pass. First, I wound up at the Department of Verification, then the Department of Misinformation, then some clerk from the Pressure Section advised me to try level eight,
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Cohesion
Cohesion is the grammatical and lexical relationship within a text or sentence. Cohesion can be defined as the links that hold a text together and give it meaning. There are two main types of cohesion: grammatical, referring to the structural content, and lexical, referring to the language content of the piece. A cohesive text is created in many different ways. In Cohesion in English, M.A.K. Halliday and identify five general categories of cohesive devices that create coherence in texts: reference, ellipsis, substitution, lexical cohesion, and conjunction.
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Anaphoric reference is the most common type of reference, used unknowingly in everyday conversation and writing. It occurs when the writer refers back to someone or something that has been previously identified, to avoid repetition. Some examples: replacing "the taxi driver" with the pronoun "he" or "two attractive girls" with "they". Another example can be found in formulas such as "as stated previously" or "the aforementioned".
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Cataphoric reference is less common in speech but can be used for dramatic effect in writing. It occurs when the audience is introduced to someone as an abstract, before later learning his or her name. For example: "Here he comes, our award-winning host... it's John Doe!" Cataphoric references can also be found in written text, for example "see page 10".
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Exophoric reference is also uncommon in speech but can be used to describe generic or abstract situations in writing. It occurs when the writer chooses not to introduce a character (or group of characters), but instead refers to them by a generic word such as "everyone". The prefix "exo" means "outside", and the persons or events referred to in this manner will never be identified by the writer.
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Ellipsis is another cohesive device. It happens when, after a more specific mention, words are omitted when the phrase needs to be repeated.
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The full form of B's reply would be: "I am going to town".
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The younger child was very outgoing, the older much more reserved.
The omitted words from the second clause are "child" and "was".
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Substitution
Substitution is very similar to ellipsis in the effect it has on the text, and occurs when instead of leaving a word or phrase out, as in ellipsis, it is substituted for another, more general word. {example}
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Conjunction
Conjunction creates cohesion by relating sentences and paragraphs to each other by using words from the class of conjunction, or numerals. This can be temporal (after,before), causal (because), coordinating (and), adversative (but, however), additive (further) or discourse markers (now, well, after all).
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Lexical cohesion
Lexical cohesion is basically created by repetition (reiteration) of the same lexeme, or general (aka shell) nouns, or other lexemes sharing the majority of semantic features: The bus ... - the vehicle ... - the chassis .... Lexical cohesion can also form relational patterns in text in a way that links sentences to create an overall feature of coherence with the audience, sometimes overlapping with other cohesion features. The understanding of how the content of sentences is linked helps to identify the central information in texts by means of a possible summary. This allows judgements on what the text is about.
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For example, 'it', 'neither' and 'this' all refer to an idea previously mentioned. 'First of all', 'then' and 'after that' help to sequence a text. 'However', 'in addition' and 'for instance' link ideas and arguments in a text.
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Cohesion is the glue that holds a piece of writing together. In other words, if a paper is cohesive, it sticks together from sentence to sentence and from paragraph to paragraph. Cohesive devices certainly include transitional words and phrases, such as therefore, furthermore, or for instance,
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that clarify for readers the relationships among ideas in a piece of writing. However, transitions aren't enough to make writing cohesive. Repetition of key words and use of reference words are also needed for cohesion.
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