Lexical cohesion used in the story “white fang” by jack london

MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING
THE UNIVERSITY OF QUY NHON

VÕ THỊ NGỌC ÁI

LEXICAL COHESION USED IN THE STORY “WHITE FANG”
BY JACK LONDON

Field: ENGLISH LINGUISTICS
Code: 8 22 02 01

Supervisor: NGU THIEN HUNG, Ph.D


BỘ GIÁO DỤC VÀ ĐÀO TẠO
TRƯỜNG ĐẠI HỌC QUY NHƠN

VÕ THỊ NGỌC ÁI

LIÊN KẾT NGỮ VỰNG TRONG TIỂU THUYẾT ―NANH TRẮNG”
CỦA TÁC GIẢ JACK LONDON

Chuyên ngành: Ngôn ngữ Anh
Code: 8 22 02 01

Người hướng dẫn: TS.NGŨ THIỆN HÙNG


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STATEMENT OF AUTHORSHIP

I totally assure that the thesis ―Lexical cohesion used in the novel
―White Fang‖ by Jack London‘‘ is my own work for the purpose of
graduating the MA course of English Linguistics.
The content of this thesis has not been published or written by any
other authors except for some references which are used in this thesis.
The thesis has not been submitted for any degree or diploma in any
university.

Quy Nhon, August, 2022

VO THI NGOC AI


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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
During the period of doing the research, considerable support and great
encouragement from my teachers, friends and family were given to me so that
I could overcome difficulties and complete my master thesis.
First of all, I would like to show my deep gratitude to my respected
supervisor, Dr. Ngu Thien Hung who gives me his helpful guidance and
stands by me from the beginning to the end of my thesis. Without his
accompaniment and encouragement, I could hardly finish this MA thesis.
Second, I owe an unpaid debt to all the qualified and experienced
teachers who helped me broaden my knowledge about English Linguistics
and my friendly classmates who gave me unforgettable memories.
Last but not least, I am extremely thankful to my beloved family and
my friends for their love, care and support during the fulfillment of this study.

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ABSTRACT
This study aims to examine the lexical cohesion realized through
lexical cohesive devices in the first four chapters of ―White Fang‖ by Jack
London in order to gain an insight into the distribution of types of lexical
devices and their textual functions. As a descriptive study, the thesis sought
the qualitative and quantitative information for the issues of the lexical
cohesive devices used in the first four chapters of ―White Fang‖ by Jack
London, the lexical ties performed by these lexical cohesive devices in the
Thematic Progression of the text of the novel. Adopting the descriptive
framework by Halliday and Hasan (1976) and Halliday and Matthiessen
(2004), the study analyzed the data collected from clauses and sentences
containing lexical items that created the cohesion and coherence of the text.
The analysis of 1.002 instances of Reiteration and Collocation reveals that
instances of Reiteration with repetition of the same word(s), synonymy,
antonymy, hyponymy, meronymy and general words outnumbered those of
collocation with binomials and lexical chains. The instances of lexical
cohesion were also found with the textual functions as elaborating, extending
and enhancing. In fulfilling these functions, the lexical items that realized the
cohesive text also were acknowledged with their contribution to Thematic
progression of the text of the novel. Finally, implications about the teaching
and learning concerning lexical cohesion were put forwards to the
employment of the framework of Systemic Functional Grammar by Halliday
and Matthiessen (2004) in analyzing the cohesion of a text, and the
recommendation to pedagogical moves in enhancing the interpretation of a
text and the writing skills with the use of lexical devices to achieve a cohesive
text.

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TABLE OF CONTENT
STATEMENT OF AUTHORSHIP ................................................................... i
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS .............................................................................. ii
ABSTRACT ..................................................................................................... iii
TABLE OF CONTENT ................................................................................... iv
LIST OF TABLES ........................................................................................... vi
LIST OF FIGURES......................................................................................... vii
CHAPTER 1. INTRODUCTION ..................................................................... 1
1.1. Rationale..................................................................................................... 1
1.2. Aims of study ............................................................................................. 4
1.3. Research questions ..................................................................................... 4
1.4. Scope of the study ...................................................................................... 4
1.5. Justification of study .................................................................................. 5
1.6. Organization of the study ........................................................................... 6
CHAPTER 2. LITERATURE REVIEW AND THEORETICAL
BACKGROUND ............................................................................................... 7
2.1. Review of previous studies ........................................................................ 7
2.2. Theoretical Background ........................................................................... 11
2.2.1. Definitions of coherence .......................................................................... 11
2.2.2. Definitions of cohesion ............................................................................ 12
2.2.3. Lexical cohesion ...................................................................................... 13
2.2.3.1. Reiteration ............................................................................................ 14
2.2.3.2. Collocation ........................................................................................... 16
2.2.4. Theme – Rheme Structure ........................................................................ 18
2.2.5. Thematic Development ............................................................................ 19

2.3. Summary .................................................................................................. 21
CHAPTER 3. RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODOLOGY ..........................22

3.1. Research design ........................................................................................ 22


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3.2. Research methods..................................................................................... 22
3.3. Data collection ......................................................................................... 23
3.3.1. Sample and sources of data ...................................................................... 23
3.3.2. Data Collection Procedures ...................................................................... 24

3.4. Data analysis ............................................................................................ 24
CHAPTER 4. FINDINGS AND DISCUSSIONS .......................................... 27
4.1. Lexical Devices ....................................................................................... 27
4.1.1. Reiteration .............................................................................................. 28
4.1.2. Collocation .............................................................................................. 50
4.2.2. Extending ................................................................................................ 64
4.2.3. Enhancing ................................................................................................ 66

4.3. Lexical Cohesive Devices as Tools for Thematic Progression................ 73
4.4. Summary .................................................................................................. 84
CHAPTER 5. CONCLUSIONS AND IMPLICATIONS .............................. 85
5.1. Conclusions .............................................................................................. 85
5.2. Implication to the Language Teaching and Learning .............................. 87
5.3. Limitation and Recommedation to Further Study ................................... 88
REFERENCES ................................................................................................ 90
APPENDICES


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LIST OF TABLES

Table 4.1. Quantitative results of lexical devices used in first four chapters
of the novel White Fang by Jack London ..................................... 27
Table 4.2. Distribution of Reiteration with lexical items in the first four
chapters ......................................................................................... 28
Table 4.3. Reiteration of the same word(s) ..................................................... 36
Table 4.4. Reiteration of synonyms ............................................................... 41
Table 4.5. Reiteration with antonyms ............................................................. 43
Table 4.6. Reiteration with hyonyms and hypernyms .................................... 46
Table 4.7. Reiteration with general words ...................................................... 48
Table 4.8. Reiteration with meronyms ............................................................ 50
Table 4.9. Collocation with binomials ............................................................ 53
Table 4.10. Collocations with lexical chains .................................................. 55
Table 4.11. Textual functions of lexical Devices of cohesion ........................ 72
Table 4.12. Thematic Progression Patterns with Lexical cohesion ................ 81


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LIST OF FIGURES
Figure 2.1. zig-zag Thematic Progression pattern (Eggins, 1994) ................. 19
Figure 2.2. Repeated Thematic Progression Pattern (adapted from Danes,
1974) ............................................................................................. 20
Figure 2.3. Derived Thematic Progression Pattern (adapted from Eggins,
2004) ............................................................................................. 21


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CHAPTER 1
INTRODUCTION

1.1. Rationale
From the linguistic view, text is a communicative occurrence which
meets seven standards of textuality that should be satisfied for a text to be
communicative. Beaugrande and Dressler (1992), these standards are the
constitutive principles defining communicative purpose of the text and help to
realize the connectedness of occurrences through syntactic relations on the
surface (cohesion); through conceptual relations in the text (coherence),
through the attitudes of the author and reader to the text (intentionality and
acceptability), through the transfer of the information (informativity), through
the setting (situationality); and through the reciprocal relationship of separate
texts (intertextuality). In linguistics and literary studies, textuality is the
property by which successive sentences form a coherent text. Among the
three basic domains of textuality - texture, structure, and context, the term
texture encompases the various devices used in establishing continuity of
sense and thus making a sequence of sentences working in terms of both
cohesion and coherence.
Cohesion analysis has been a growing interest in several branches of
linguistics. Halliday and Hasan (1976), Halliday and Matthiessen (2004),
Tanskanen (2006) aimed to develop an appropriate taxonomy for the analysis
of all kinds of texts. Newmark (1987), the topic of cohesion has always been
the most useful constituent of discourse analysis or text linguistics applicable
to translation. Analysis of cohesive devices within a text gives us more insight
into how writers structure what they want to say and may be crucial factors in
our judgments of whether something is well-written or not. Cohesion helps to


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create texture through meaning relation that requires one element to be
interpreted by reference to another. In other words, there is cohesion, where
the interpretation of an item in the discourse depends upon reference being

made to some other item in the discourse. Along with the emphasis on the
importance of text cohesion to show text relations, Givón (1983) stated that as
the realizations of cohesion, cohesive devices enable communicators to
produce language which is connected, coherent, and relevant to the subject at
hand.
Among the different types of cohesive devices, namely, reference,
substitution, ellipsis, conjunction, and lexical cohesion (Haliday & Hasan,
1976), lexical cohesion is of great importance and has different applications in
translation studies, computational linguistics, information retrieval researches
and teaching and learning issues. Lexical cohesion involves the choice of
vocabulary that is concerned with the relationship that exists between lexical
items in a text such as words and phrases.
Different genres may show a tendency towards the use of some specific
types of different cohesive devices for creating texts. Since their role in
discourse organization is genre-dependent, cohesion is dominant in certain
genres, whereas in other genres coherence might be more dominant in the
organization of discourse. Halliday & Hasan (1976), cohesion is sensitive to
the varieties of discourse. Although lexical cohesion is present in the cohesion
structure of all these forms of discourse, the distribution of the cohesive types
strongly differs for genres. We can find occurrence of certain cohesive links
more typically in certain varieties of discourse than others. For instance, for
investigations of participant chains, referential cohesion is a characteristic
type of narrative discourse (Fox, 1987).
In spite of the importance of lexical cohesion in shaping the unity and
connectedness of text and the distribution of cohesion in different genres, the


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literature review has seen few descriptive studies on lexical cohesion in
literary works. There have been some studies on the lexical cohesive devices,

namely reframed narrativity in literary translation: an investigation of the
explicitation of cohesive chains (Li & Li, 2021), analysis of lexical cohesion
on the students‘ writing (Sadibutar, 2021), the contribution of lexical cohesion
to the text cohesion in EFL students‘ expository texts (Adiantika, 2018).
In sum, there have been many studies concerning with different aspects
of lexical cohesion in which studies on the meaning and structure of a text
also mention the relationship between clauses in clause complexes. Although
lexical cohesion have been studied in details as lexical cohesion between
clauses, these studies only focused on fairy tales, short stories, not much on
novels. The latest work that has investigated the cohesive devices used
Chapter 5 ―White Fang and the Indians‖ in the novel ―White Fang‖ by Jack
London in view of Systemic Functional Linguiscs (SFG) was conducted by
Nguyen (2012). Unfortunately, this descriptive study put its focus on the
grammatical cohesive devices with two types of logico-semantic relation –
expansion and projection. Also, the textual functions of the lexical devices to
realize cohesion in the text, namely Thematic Progression has not been
mentioned and discussed in these descriptive studies. Moreover, binomials, a
kind of collocation which are frequently used in literary texts have not been
addressed as one type of lexical items for lexical cohesion.
For those reasons, I chose the novel ―White Fang‖ written by Jack
London to investigate the lexical cohesion within simple clauses and between
clauses in clause complexes. The reason for my selecting the novel is not only
because of its popularity but also because of its precise prose style. Moreover,
doing this research gives me a chance to get to know the novel with lessons
on bravery, patience, tolerance and love through the use of lexical cohesion in
the text.


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1.2. Aims of study

This study aims to examine the lexical cohesion realized through
lexical cohesive devices in the first four chapters of ―White Fang‖ by Jack
London in order to gain an insight into the distribution of types of lexical
devices and their textual functions.
1.3. Research questions
To achieve the aims of study, the thesis attempts to answer the
following questions.
1) What are the lexical cohesive devices used in the first four chapters
of ―White Fang‖ by Jack London?
2) What are the lexical ties performed by the lexical cohesive devices
used in the first four chapters of ―White Fang‖ by Jack London?
3) What are the textual functions performed by these lexical cohesive
devices in Thematic Progression in the first four chapters of ―White
Fang‖ by Jack London?
1.4. Scope of the study
The novel consists of 20 chapters but I chose only the first four chapters
as the illustrated material for the analysis because through these chapters, the
lexical cohesion are realized quite clearly as the lexical chains that set up the
scenes of the story at the beginning. As the result, readers can understand
more about the lexical cohesion used to start the journey along with the
writer. Thus, my study was restricted to the examination of Lexical cohesion
used in first four chapters in the novel ―White Fang‖ by Jack London.
The issues of lexical cohesive devices to realize cohesion of the text of
the four chapters and the textual functions performed by these lexical
cohesive devices in Thematic Progression in the first four chapters of ―White
Fang‖ by Jack London will be discussed in the perspecitives of Halliday and
Hasan‘s (1976) model of lexical cohesion and Halliday and Matthiessen


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(2004) with the analytical framework of SFG. Also, the two terms binomial
and lexical chain as naming the lexical items for cohesion were used in this
study. The former was used with the sense other than the linguistic definition
of a fossilized collocation with an irreversible pair of words and the latter was
defined as instances of any lexical items that were used to build up a cohesive
chain under the same theme or context in sentences and paragraphs.
Although the lexico-grammar in view of SFG discusses the issues of
cohesion on the aspects of clause complexing which involves taxis and
logico-semantics, such problems of interdependency between clauses as
parataxis and hypotaxis, the two literary terms that describe the way clauses
in complex or simple sentences are ordered, positioned, and related to one
another in the clause relation in the texts will not be dealt with in this study.
Regarding the Logico-semantics, the nature of the relation between
clauses concerning extension, elaboration and enhancement will be discussed in
terms of lexical relations between lexical items in a sentence or clauses, between
clauses and paragraphs without referring to projection of locution or ideas.
1.5. Justification of study
The outcome of this study is expected to bring an insight into the use of
lexical devices to realize cohesion. Specifically the distribution of the
different types of lexical devices in the first four chapters of the novel ―White
Fang‖ by Jack London. Also, the analysis of the lexical relations in the text is
hoped to bring some pedagogical implications to the teaching and learning of
English, especially the assessment of the textuality of the narrative text of a
literary works. The learners are expected to earn the benefits from the results
of analysis to practice the skills of writing short stories concerning the lexical
cohesive devices to earn a coherent text.


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1.6. Organization of the study

The study is presented in five chapters:
Chapter 1: Introduction
In this chapter, the researcher deals with general issues of the study
such as the reason to choose this topic, justification, aims, objectives, and
scope of the study. The audience will also find it easy to follow the study
through research questions posed in this chapter.
Chapter 2: Literature Review and Theoretical Background
This chapter is an overview of previous related studies and theories
employed as the basis for arguments and analysis of the data in the study.
This chapter covers such terms as coherence, cohesion, Thematic progression.
Chapter 3: Research Design and Methodology
This chapter demonstrates the setting, participants, and method of data
collection as well as the process of data analysis in particular and the
procedure of research in general.
Chapter 4: Findings & discussion
The qualitative and quantitative information for the answers to the
research questions is presented in this chapter. The first part of this chapter
describes the lexical cohesive devices. The second part presents the analysis
of the lexical ties performed by the lexical cohesive devices. The last part
deals with the textual functions.
Chapter 5: Conclusions & implications
This chapter is the summary of research questions, the procedure
employed, and the results obtained. In the end, the implications of the
findings and limitations of the research were pointed out. This chapter also
includes the suggestions for further research on related issues.


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CHAPTER 2

LITERATURE REVIEW
AND THEORETICAL BACKGROUND
2.1. Review of previous studies
The issues of cohesion and coherence of a text and discourse have been
a growing interest to linguists and researchers from different approaches,
namely lexical semantics and discourse analysis in view of semantic relations
and Thematic Progression. The review presents related studies from different
approaches of descriptive, comparative and corpus linguistics, concerning the
use of cohesive devices in diferent genres such as novels, standard proficiency
tests, students‘ writing papers under themes and topics, namely tokens
frequently used for types of cohesive devices, second language acquisition
and thematic progression. Specifically, more focus is put on studies of lexical
devices such as Reiteration and Collocation, which include the subtype of
these, namely Binomials, viewed in this study as the one falling into the
category of Collocation.
In view of cohesion in Charles Dickens's novels, Muhsin Al-Maliki (2017)
analyzed cohesion in part of Charles Dickens‘s Hard Times (1854) in terms of
Hallidy and Hasan‘s model. The study examined and categorized the five devices
proposed in measuring their role to some aspects of the novel including characters,
themes, and imageries. The study revealed that Dickens skilfully employed these
cohesive devices to build up the texture and serve his novel.
Regarding the lexical cohesion, Armaia (2013) examined reiteration
and collocation in Suzanne Collin‘s Catching Fire by using discourse analysis
with descriptive qualitative method in order to find out and describe types of
reiteration in this fiction works by using Halliday and Hasan’s theory about


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cohesion and meaning of expression containing reiteration and collocation.
The researcher found out thirty- five expressions containing the kinds of

reiteration and collocation with thirteen expressions that contain repetition,
seven expressions that contain synonym or near synonym, four expressions
that contain superordinate, three expressions that contain general word, and
eight expressions that contain collocation.
Using an acceptability judgment task for the investigation into the
acquisition of Binomials by Kuwaiti EFL Learners, Abdullah and his partner
(2015) tested whether fifty Kuwait EFL learners are aware of one type of
lexical collocations, namely, binomials (e.g., up and down, salt and pepper,
men and women) with the question whether the participants‘ English
proficiency level and the syntactic category of the internal components of
binomials play a role in their acquisition. The results confirmed a relation
between the participants‘ English proficiency level and their answers on the
test whereby the advanced learners performed better than the intermediate
learners. The study also revealed that Kuwaiti EFL learners have little
awareness of English binomials and their lack of awareness was due to
several reasons such as L1 negative transfer, the existence of culture-specific
items and lack of exposure to certain items.
With the view of looking into lexical cohesion in terms of its
application in English language teaching (ELT), Mahlberg (2006) applied a
corpus theoretical approach to the description of English prioritises lexis over
the assumption that lexical and grammatical phenomena can be clearly
distinguished. This view saw cohesion as the production of interlocking
lexico-grammatical patterns and overlapping lexical items. The study shows
links between communicative approaches to ELT and corpus linguistics, and
suggests practical applications of corpus theoretical concepts.
In the investigation into Lexical Cohesion in English and Persian Texts


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of Novels, Rahimi (2012) attempted to identitfy the stylistic differences

between Persian and English novelists with regard to their choices and
application of lexical patterns, the textual differences between Persian and
English novels in terms of lexical cohesion analyzed 1000-word excerpts of
these novels. The study showed that the difference between Persian and
English novelists‘ choices of lexical patterns was attributed to the higher
number of reiteration as well as the collocation pairs used by Persian novelists
with higher frequency in the Persian novels than in the English ones (e.g.
Equivalence and Elaborative collocation), conversely some are more salient in
English texts under study (e.g. Simple repetition).
With the aim to investigate the logico-semantic relations between
clauses in clause complexes, on the basis of her re-examination of some basic
concepts of systemic functional grammar and two types of logico-semantic
relation – expansion and projection, Nguyen (2012) analyzed Chapter 5
―White Fang and the Indians‖ in the novel ―White Fang‖ by Jack London
based on the framework of Halliday‘s (1994) An Introduction to Functional
Grammar. The study showed that both types of logico-semantic relations were
present in the text in which expansion was predominant than projection. This
could be attributed to the writer‘s main aims in describing the characters, their
behavior and actions rather than quoting or reporting their talks. Extension
was the most frequent use in expansion because of the construction of the text
for giving more information rather than explaining it. In projection, projecting
locutions were found to be more prominent than projecting ideas, for the fact
that the characters communicated with each other by languages rather than by
thoughts. The study also revealed some characteristics of the type of the text
along with the reflection of the complexity of language and logico-semantic
relations between clauses in clause complexes. These findings help to put
forward some implications for teaching and learning English and some


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suggestions for further research.
Approaching the topic of thematic progression from the analysis of
literary works, Qadoury Abed (2010) examined the thematic progression
patterns in ―A Tale of Two Cities‖ by Charles Dickens, based on Danes
(1974). This author has established thematic progression patterns and stressed
the difference due to the overuse of Constant Theme and Ellipsis formed with
repetition, synonymy between theme and rheme.
In a descriptive study of the reading insert text question (RITQ) of
TOEFL IBT, Tran (2019) examined the cohesion and coherence of the RITQ
of TOEFL iBT in order to help the students have a better insight into
identifying the factors of cohesion and coherence for an effective performance
of the reading test. The author analyzed 7 reading passages with insert text
questions with a diagnostic and a 10-item questionnaire delivered to 100
students accompanied by a structured interview to 10 students used to collect
both quantitative and qualitative data about the learners‘ difficulties in dealing
with this kind of questions. The findings revealed that an insert text question
can get the relevance at a position in the context of the paragraph given that
the explicit and implicit information obtained from the inference of the clues
of cohesion and coherence, cognitive/contextual effect are established. Also,
the information about the students‘ difficulties in dealing with this kind of
questions were provided concerning their failure in identifying the clues and
figuring out the thematic progression to make good decision on a relevant
choice.
Though the mentioned above researches have brought into light the
issues of cohesive devices and their roles in contributing to the textuality with
different kinds of language items in different genres, there still remain some
gaps for further discussion. Types of lexical cohesive devices should be
exhaustively examined and discussed. Also, specific lexical items should be

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identified with their functions in contributing to the shaping of the text as a
whole and the interpretation of the text in terms of meaning specification in
genres such as narration of novels through lexical ties and textual functions
performed by the lexical devices in particular contexts of the novel.
2.2. Theoretical Background
The objectives and research questions of study require the researcher to
present some related concepts that are neccesary for inpreting the constructs
of this study, namely the definition of coherence, cohesion with types of
grammatical and lexical ones, Theme-Rheme structure and some basic types
of Thematic Progression.
2.2.1. Definitions of coherence
Brown and Yule (1983:224) cohesion and coherence are means of
understanding between units in a text or utterance. In the discourse structure,
coherence is necessary aspects of existence to arrange the inner relationship
between the propositions in one another to achieve wholeness. This existence of
relations of meaning that occur is reflected by inter-elements in semantics to
realize the coherent wholes of the text. These relationships sometimes occur with
a tool of cohesion, but it can sometimes occur without the help of cohesion. On
the whole relations of meaning, coherent is a part of semantic organization.
Meanwhile, Halliday and Hassan (1976) asserted that basically the
structure of discourse is not a syntactic structure, but the semantic structure,
namely semantic sentences containing the propositions. Some sentences will
be a discourse from a relationship of meaning (sense) between the sentences
itself. Therefore, because of the coherence of these relationships, a set of
sentences accepted as a whole is relatively complete.
The existence of the element of coherence is actually not in text-only
unit (formally), but it is also on the ability of the reader / listener link the
meaning and interpretation of a form of discourse that it receives.

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2.2.2. Definitions of cohesion
The concept of cohesion is a semantic one that refers to radiations of
meaning that exists within the text and that defines it as a text. Halliday and
Hasan (1976) suggest that cohesion is the basis of coherence in text. Lexical
cohesion is the linkage between parts of the essay to obtain a cohesive unity
of structure. The lexical elements include synonym , antonym, hyponym,
repetition, general noun and collocation. While grammatical cohesion is the
relation of grammatical elements that include references, substitutions, ellipsis
and conjunctions. These elements are very important in writing essays in
order to make sentences related to each other.
In Cohesion in English, Halliday & Hasan (1976) identifies five general
categories of cohesive devices that signal coherence in texts:
(1) reference
(2) ellipsis
(3) substitution
(4) lexical cohesion
(5) conjunction
These authors (1976), cohesion can be broadly classified as
grammatical (reference, substitution, ellipsis) and lexical (reiteration,
collocation). Halliday and Hassan keep conjunction on the borderline of the
grammatical and lexical cohesion. In the scope of this thesis, this device is
treated as grammatical item as suggested by Halliday and Hasan (1976) and
will not be dealt with.
Ultimately, the difference between cohesion and coherence is this:
cohesion is a term for sticking together; it means that the text all hangs
together. Coherence is a term for making sense; it means that there is sense in
the text. Hence the term coherence relations refers to the relations between
sentences that contribute to their making sense.

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Cohesion and coherence relations may be distinguished in the
following way. A coherence relation is a relation among clauses or sentences,
such as elaboration, support, cause, or exemplification.
Coherence has to be clearly distinguished from cohesion. Cohesion
refers to the overt semantic relations in the text, whereas coherence refers to
semantic and pragmatic relations between text parts which are interpretable
against the background of specific world knowledge (de Beaugrande &
Dressler 1981).
2.2.3. Lexical cohesion
Halliday and Hasan (1976) proposed two major categories of lexical
cohesion: Reiteration and Collocation. In both categories, the presence of one
lexical element in a text can facilitate the interpretation of another.
Accordingly, reiteration is described as a phenomenon in which one lexical
item refers back to another to which it is related by having a common
referent, i.e., a common source for interpreting the two items (p. 278). By
Halliday and Hasan (1976), a reiterated item may be one of these four types
of reiterated items are sugested: (1) the same word, or a repetition, (2) a
synonym or near-synonym, (3) a superordinate word, or (4) a general word.
Collocational cohesion, on the other hand, refers primarily to the sense
of connected discourse created by the close co-occurrence of relatively low
frequency words that tend to appear in similar contexts.
According to Partridge (2000:134), lexical cohesion refers to
relationship among lexical items in a text and, in particular, among content
words. The main kinds of lexical cohesion are repetition, synonymy,
antonymy, hyponymy, meronymy, and collocation.
Halliday & Hasan mainly distinguish between reiteration and
collocation. The former includes all phenomena which ―have in common the

fact that one lexical item refers back to another, to which it is related by


14
having a common referent‖ (1976:278). It is again subdivided into repetition,
synonym (or near-synonym), superordinate and general word.
With collocation, co-reference is not considered to matter since it
concerns ―any pair of lexical items that stand to each other in some
recognizable lexicosemantic (word meaning) relation‖ (Halliday & Hasan
1976:285). Thus the notion of collocation may be comparable to those called
bridging, part-whole relations or indirect anaphoric relations in the literature.
In this study, I adopt Halliday and Hasan‘s definition and model of
Lexical Cohesion as a theoretical framework which is modified with
Partridge‘s (2000) classification to add such types as antonymy and
hyponymy to the category Reiteration while the term superordinate is used.
Regarding subtypes of Collocation, I propose to put Binomials as the lexical
device functioning as collocational units to signal the inner textuality of a
text as a whole under a common theme or topic of a certain paragraph. Also,
cases of cohesive ties between two or more referring expressions via lexis
and those that may relate more than two linguistic expressions in so-called
lexical chains.
2.2.4. Reiteration
2.2.4.1. Repetition of the same word(s)
The most direct form of lexical cohesion is repetition of a lexical item;
e.g. bear in sentence Algy met a bear. The bear was bulgy (Halliday, 1985:
310). Here the second occurrence of bear harks back to the first.
Repetition is the reoccurrence of words in the text. Halliday and Hasan
(1976) and Tanskanen (2006) keep repetition together with systematic
semantic relations under one main category (reiteration). In this paper
repetition is kept separately from the systematic and non-systematic semantic

relations for two reasons. Firstly, the meaning of this relation is
―identification of concepts‖.


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2.2.4.2. Synonymy or Near – synonym
Lexical cohesion with synonymy results from the choice of a lexical item
that is in some sense synonymous with a preceding one (Halliday and Matthiessen
(2004:572-573). For example, sound with noise, cavalry with horses, in:
He was just wondering which road to take when he was startled by a
noise from behind him. It was the noise of trotting horses . . . He dismounted
and led his horse as quickly as he could along the right-hand road. The sound
of the cavalry grew rapidly nearer . . .
Near synonyms a word that has almost the same meaning as another
word, for example, the words "hungry" and "peckish" are near-synonyms.
2.2.4.3. Antonymy
Antonymy is also one of the cohesive devices that refers to a totally
opposite concept or it can be interpreted as something contradicts/opposes
with the other lingual units. By Hurford and Heasley (1989), traditional view of
antonymy is rather simple to define it as ‗oppositeness of meaning‘ and this view
is not adequate, as words may be opposite in meaning in different ways, and some
words have no real opposites. Accordingly, the relations between pairs or phrases
of antonymy can be various such as binary (alive-dead), relational (father-son),
gradable (good-bad) or incompatible (breakfast-dinner).
2.2.4.4. Hyponymy
Hyponymy and hyperonymy are lexical cohesive relations between an
item and a more general item. In the case of hyperonymy the general item
creates a cohesive link with the preceding more specific item, whereas in the
case of the more specific item creates the link with the preceding general
item. Thus the directionality of the relation makes the difference between

them.
By Hurford and Heaslay (1983), hyponymy is a sense relation between
predicates (or sometimes longer phrases) whereby the meaning of one


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predicate (or phrase) is included in the meaning of the other.
For example, the meaning of red is included in the meaning of scarlet.
Red is the superordinate term; scarlet is a hyponym of red (scarlet is a
kind of red).
Here is a further example by Halliday and Hasan (1976):
Henry’s bought himself a new Jaguar. He practically lives in the car
(Halliday and Hasan, 1976: 278)
Here, car refers back to Jaguar; and the car is a superordinate of Jaguar.
2.2.4.5. Meronymy
Halliday and Matthiessen (2004) defined Meronymy as cases of lexical
iterms denoting parts of the same whole, for example, branch, root, trunk are
co-meronyms as parts of tree.
2.2.4.6. General Words
The general words which correspond to major classes of lexical items,
are very commonly used with cohesive force. Only the noun is cohesive in the
context of reference are used with cohesive force. When it has the same
referent as whatever it is presupposing, and when it is accompanied by a
reference item. (Halliday and Hasan, 1976: 280-281)
2.2.5. Collocation
Halliday & Hasan (1976: 287) used the notions of Collocation and
Collocationational Cohesion as an umbrella term for the kind of cohesion
produced by the co-occurrence of lexical elements that are in certain point or
another typically linked with each other due to their identical context.
Collocation is the use of ―a word that is in some way associated with another

word in the preceding text, because it is a direct repetition of it, or is in some
sense synonymous with it, or tends to occur in the same lexical environment‖
(Halliday & Hasan, 1976).
For example: