an analysis of lexical cohesive devices in funtional food advertisements in english and vietnamese = phân tích các phương tiện liên kết từ vựng trong quảng cáo thực phẩm chức năng trong tiếng anh và tiếng việt

vi
TABLE OF CONTENTS

CERTIFICATE OF ORGININALITY OF STUDY PROJECT REPORT. i
ABSTRACT ii
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS iii
LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS iv
LIST OF TABLES v
PART A: INTRODUCTION 1
1. Rationale for the study 1
2. Aims of the study 2
3. Research questions of the study 2
4. Significance of the study 2
5. Scope of the study 3
6. Methodology 3
7. Design of the study 5
PART B: DEVELOPMENT 5
Chapter 1: Theoretical Background & Review of Related Literature 5
1.1. Discourse and discourse analysis 6
1.1.1. The concept of discourse 6
1.1.2. Spoken and Written Discourse 7
1.1.3. Discourse Analysis 8
1.1.4. Context in Discourse Analysis 8
1.2. Cohesion 9
1.2.1. The concept of cohesion 9
1.2.2. Classification of cohesion 11
Chapter 2: An overview of Functional Food and Functional Food Advertisements 16
2.1. The notion of Functional Food 16
2.2. Functional Food Advertisements 18
2.2.1. The functions of advertising 18

2.2.2. The strategies of advertising 19
2.2.3. The language of advertising 19

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2.2.4. General Description of Functional Food advertisements 19
2.2.4.1. Context of English and Vietnamese FFAs 19
2.2.4.2. The structure of an FFA 22
Chapter 3: An analysis of lexical cohesive devices in FFAs 24
3.1. An overview of Lexical Cohesive Devices in English and Vietnamese FFAs 24
3.2. Detailed Analysis of Lexical Cohesive Devices in English and Vietnamese FFAs 25
3.2.1. Reiteration 25
3.2.1.1. Repetition 26
3.2.1.2. Synonyms 29
3.2.1.3. Near Synonyms 31
3.2.1.4. Super-ordinates 34
3.2.2. Collocation 37
3.2.2.1. Lexical collocation 37
3.2.2.2. Grammatical collocation 38
Part C: CONCLUSION 42
REFERENCES 45
APPENDIX 1 I
APPENDIX 2 III
APPENDIX 3 V
APPENDIX 4 VI
APPENDIX 5 VII
APPENDIX 6 X
APPENDIX 7 XIII
APPENDIX 8 XIV
APPENDIX 9 XV

iv
LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS

FFs : Functional Foods

FFAs : Functional Food Advertisements

DA : Discourse Analysis



v
LIST OF TABLES


Page
Table 1: Types of cohesion
12
Table 2: The frequency of occurrence of lexical cohesive devices
in English and Vietnamese FFAs
24
Table 3: The frequency of occurrence of reiteration in English
and Vietnamese FFAs
25
Table 4: The frequency of occurrence of repetition in English and
Vietnamese FFAs
26
Table 5: The frequency of occurrence of collocation in English

and Vietnamese FFAs
38
Table 6: The frequency of occurrence of grammatical collocation
in English and Vietnamese FFAs
39
Table 7: Percentage of N-collocations and other types in English
FFAs
40
Table 8: Percentage of N-collocations and other types in
Vietnamese FFAs
40


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PART A: INTRODUCTION

1. Rationale for the study
Reasons for choosing functional food advertisements ( FFAs) for analysis
There is much greater recognition today that people can help themselves and their
families to reduce the risk of illness and disease and to maintain their state of health and
well being through a healthy lifestyle, including the diet. The primary role of diet is to
provide sufficient nutrients to meet the nutritional requirements of an individual. Many
traditional food products including fruits, vegetables, soya, whole grains and milk have
been found to contain components with potential health benefits. In addition to these foods,
new foods are being developed to enhance or incorporate these beneficial components for
their health benefits or desirable physiological effects. As said before, consumer interest in
the relationship between diet and health has increased substantially, thanks to an increase
in life quality accompanying an improved life expectancy. In particular, there has been an
explosion of consumer interest in the health enhancing role of specific foods or
physiologically-active food components, so-called functional foods. Functional foods are

an emerging field in food science due to their increasing popularity with health-conscious
consumers. With its easy use, ability to support good health with nutrients and improve the
immune system, functional food is winning the hearts of more and more consumers. As a
matter of fact, functional foods seem to be sort of new to a large number of Vietnamese
people. There exist different ideas, even contrary ideas on this new kind of product. The
idea of investigating this kind of product to have a better understanding on it comes deeply
to my mind.
As mentioned before, consumers‟ interest in functional foods has been increasing
during the late twentieth century as people's interest in achieving and maintaining good health
increased. People‟s demand has increased; offering an opportunity for the age of advertising,
advertising has been gaining its great popularity. Different kinds of customers potentially
demand different ways of presenting advertisements. Advertisements are so available around
us that we cannot help taking notice of them. They are informative and keep us in touch with
the world. We can see them in newspapers, magazines, radios, televisions, or public places. It
is the fact that they play a remarkably important role in the socio-economy of any country. For
this reason, I decide to involve myself in the field of advertising.
Reasons for investigating lexical cohesive devices

2
During my attending discourse analysis lectures delivered by Professor Nguyen
Hoa, I was attracted by his talk explaining the two notion “cohesion” and “coherence”
clearly and understandably. Referring back to my interest in the language of advertising, I
combine these two to make a decision of analyzing lexical cohesion in advertising
discourses. It is noticeable that many researches on cohesive devices and particularly on
lexical cohesive devices have been carried out in many discourses and genres. Also, many
studies of advertising discourse have focused on the language used in advertisements.
However, none has been done to functional food advertisements.
In the light of discourse analysis, cohesion and coherence are among major aspects
studied. Basing on the theory of these two terms, I analyze the linguistic features in terms
of syntax of functional food advertisements in which I can see the frequency of occurrence

of lexical cohesive devices and then draw some noticeable findings.
2. Aims of the study
The study serves four main aims:
- to give a brief overview on discourse and discourse analysis with the two related
aspects: cohesion and coherence.
- to give a general understanding of the notion “functional food” and the language
of advertising.
- to investigate and describe the employment of lexical cohesive devices in this
type of advertisement to work out their cohesive functions in particular, their roles in
general in the creation of successful advertisements.
- to make a comparative analysis of lexical cohesion between English and
Vietnamese FFAs.
3. Research questions of the study
In order to achieve the aims stated above, the study is meant to find out the answers
to 4 following research questions:
- What are the lexical cohesive devices used in English FFAs and Vietnamese ones?
- What are the frequencies of occurrence of these lexical cohesive devices?
- How do lexical cohesive devices contribute to the success of a functional food
advertisement?
- What are the similarities and differences in the employment of lexical cohesive
devices between English samples and Vietnamese ones?
4. Significance of the study

3
This study contributes to verify the correctness and significance related to linguistic
theories in discourse analysis by working on a certain kind of discourse (Functional Food
Advertisements). Together with some previous studies on discourse analysis of advertising,
the study covers another research on another type of advertising - Functional Food
Advertisements. It can be a useful analysis to understand the role and contribution of
lexical cohesive devices to successful FFAs.

Especially, this study is of great importance to me; it reflects my interest and
concern about advertisement genre, this study is a valuable assertion on my effort to sort
out the kinds of magazine and collect the advertisement samples. More importantly, thanks
to this study, I could create a worthy opportunity for myself to have a true and deep
understanding on a new and blooming kind of product in the world in general, in Vietnam
in particular, then it is my hope that this study can contribute to raising people‟s awareness
of functional foods and FFAs.
Last but not least, this study can be a foundation for further studies on analysis of
Function Food advertising in the light of other linguistic branches such as pragmatics,
semantics.
5. Scope of the study
Due to the limited time and knowledge, it is not my ambition to have a
comprehensive analysis of FFAs. I merely focus on the lexical cohesive devices in the
advertisements for only one kind of products namely FFAs. The investigation on one of
two main aspects of cohesion, grammatical one, is beyond of the scope of this study, and
this issue should be left for further study.
The samples include 10 English FFAs and Vietnamese ones with equivalent
number for the purpose of contrastive analysis. All the data collected will be analyzed to
explore their contribution to the creation of the cohesive and coherent text with precision,
unambiguity, and tightness.
6. Methodology
Description of data:
Subjects for this study are advertisements of functional foods, a large number of
which can be found on televisions, on newspapers, on the internet, and so on. However,
this study focuses on samples of advertisements taken out from some magazines in both
English and Vietnamese because magazines are one of written discourses in which the
author can find it easier to explore lexical cohesive devices and their role and contribution
to the effective advertisements. Moreover, FFAs are not frequently found in newspapers.

4

That is the reason why the genre “magazines” is chosen as the source to collect the data for
the study.
It is a fact that collecting samples for data analysis is time-consuming for the reason
that the market for English magazines is not big, the number of English magazines left in
the market is limited in Vietnam country whereas it is much easier to reach Vietnamese
magazines in which appear FFAs. Finally, the author of this thesis was able to get what
needed.
Specifically, 10 English samples of FFAs are collected from some favorite and
famous magazines including Women‟s Weekly, Female, and Glamour. Among a variety of
magazines in Vietnamese, Tiếp thị và gia đình,Phụ nữ, Thế giới phụ nữ, and Truyền hình
are also chosen as the source of data. In these, 10 advertisements for functional foods are
picked up. These magazines are chosen for data collection because of their common
characteristics. Firstly, all of these magazines have the section “advertisements” which are
popular among customers who are able to afford to buy such kinds of products as
functional foods. Secondly, the target markets of all these magazines are mainly the
women who can be reached by their care of their health and beauty. Lastly, these female
customers are clearly more eligible than male ones.
All 10 samples in English language are for the products originated from English-
speaking countries, whereas 8 samples in Vietnamese language are for products produced
in Vietnam, the three other ones in Thailand, Sweden and China. For these, Vietnamese
copywriters / advertisers either create advertisements for them or translate original
advertisements into Vietnamese ones.
Methods of the study:
- Deductive method: this is a study from discourse analysis approach, focusing on
lexical cohesion, thus descriptions and interpretations undeniably base on the works of a few
prominent authors and their contributions to related fields such as discourse analysis, cohesion.
Besides, a framework about the functional food products and language of advertising is set up
in order to find out the defining characteristics of functional foods and FFAs.
- Inductive method: As introduced in the previous part, the study is aimed to
explore the types of lexical cohesive devices used in FFAs .Consequently; I will arrive at

generalizations of explanations and form questions for further research.
- Qualitative and quantitative methods: Qualitative method helps the study
approach the advertising samples, then find out general features of these advertisements.

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After the qualitative analysis, the data is also quantitatively analyzed. This quantitative is
exploited most of the time to search for what the lexical cohesive devices are used.
- Descriptive method: In the investigation of data, the descriptive method is
employed to give a detailed description of data in terms lexical cohesion. It is through this
process that the significance level of each lexical cohesive device to the advertisements is
specified.
7. Design of the study
Within the scope mentioned above, the thesis is structured as follows:
Part A: INTRODUCTION
This part introduces the rationale, aims, methods, scope, significance, and the
design of the study.
Part B: DEVELOPMENT
This part consists of three chapters:
Chapter 1: Theoretical Background & Review of Related Literature which covers
some theoretical knowledge on discourse analysis in general, on cohesive devices in
particular.
Chapter 2: An overview on Functional Foods & Functional Food Advertisements.
This chapter deals firstly with the defining characteristics of FFs (Functional Foods) and
then with advertising discourse together with general descriptions of FFAs.
Chapter 3: An analysis of lexical cohesive devices in English and Vietnamese
FFAs. The third chapter in Part B, also the main one of the study, focused on the analysis
of the lexical cohesive devices employed
Part C: CONCLUSION: Firstly, I attempt to present recapitulation with some major
findings. Finally, some limitations and suggestions are mentioned.

PART B: DEVELOPMENT
Chapter 1: Theoretical Background & Review of Related Literature

This chapter aims at dealing with theoretical framework of the study. The chapter
begins with a brief view on discourse and discourse analysis. In this part, some important
concepts in discourse analysis will be looked at, such as discourse and text, spoken and
written discourse, and context in discourse analysis. Then, the study investigates the notion

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“cohesion” which will be broken into the concept of cohesion, cohesion and coherence,
and classification of cohesion. The writer of this study takes the view of Halliday and
Hasan as the theoretical framework.
1.1. Discourse and discourse analysis
1.1.1. The concept of discourse
There are different ways of understanding and defining “discourse”. A number of
definitions of discourse have been offered. It is a fact that the term “discourse” is very
ambiguous. This notion should be investigated along with the notion “text”, which will be
presented below:
Discourse and Text
“Discourse” and “text” are two terms in discourse analysis which are in need of
research and clarification because they may cause confusion for teachers and students of
discourse analysis, as well as researchers doing discourse analysis. Some scholars identify
discourse with text and they supposed that they can be used interchangeably; meanwhile,
some other linguists consider text and discourse as two separate entities, and then have
paid much attention to the distinction between a discourse and a text. For some of them,
text is used for writing and discourse is used for speech.
Brown & Yule (1983:6) argue that text is the representation of discourse, and the
term “text” is used to refer to the verbal record of a communicative act. Nunan (1993:7-8)
affirms that the term “text” is used to “refer to any written record of a communicative

event”, meanwhile the term “discourse” is reserved to refer to the interpretation of the
communicative event in context.”. Crystal (1992:25) says: “Discourse is a continuous
stretch of language larger than a sentence, often constituting a coherent unit such as a
sermon, argument, joke, or a narrative”.
According to Halliday & Hasan (1976:2, Cohesion in English), “a text has texture
and this is what distinguishes it from something that is not a text”. The primary
determinant of whether a set of sentences do or do not constitute a text depends on
cohesive relationships within and between the sentences. They also state “A text is a unit of
language in use. It is not a grammatical unit, like a clause or sentence”. (Halliday &
Hasan, 1976:1). To emphasize the semantic role of text, they add “a text is best regarded
as a semantic unit: a unit not of form but of meaning. A text does not consist of sentences;
it is REALIZED BY, or encoded in, sentences.”(Halliday & Hasan, 1976:2). Halliday

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(1985:290) states that “discourse itself is a process and the term text is usually taken as
referring to the product”.
Hoang Van Van (2006:15) argues that text and discourse could be used
interchangeably with the explanation that “text or discourse is analysis instance of
language in use”, or “any attempt to distinguish text from discourse will result in
complicating the problem”. Nguyen Hoa (2000:20) states that “discourse is the
communicative process while text is the verbal or physical records of this process”.
To sum up, it is believed that discourse is a combination of sentences which are not
arranged randomly but orderly to express a complete meaning. That is the why a
combination of some sentences well-formed but meaningless cannot be seen as a
discourse.
Actually, it is not easy to make a clear cut between text and discourse. In this study,
I would like to take Brown & Yule‟s viewpoint on text and discourse as the base, “the text
is the representation of discourse”.
1.1.2. Spoken and Written Discourse
DA (Discourse Analysis) is not only concerned with the description and analysis of

spoken interaction. It is clear that we daily consume hundreds of written and printed
words: newspapers, letters, emails, instructions, notices, leaflets, billboards, and
advertisements. We -the readers- of course, expect them to be coherent, meaningful
communications in which the words and/ or sentences are linked to one another. From that
point, discourse analysts are equally interested in written interaction. Therefore, the term
DA could be used to cover the study both spoken and written discourse.
With written texts, the writer has usually had time to think about what to say and
how to say it, and the sentences are usually well-formed in a way that the utterances of
natural and spontaneous talk are not. Compared with written texts in terms of grammar,
spoken texts are unedited. Moreover, “the written discourse displays a much higher ratio
of lexical (content) words …to total running words” (Hoang Van Van, 2006:24). In terms
of demands on the listener and reader, spoken and written discourse also differ. With
written discourse, there are no shared situations. The situation therefore should be inferred
from the text. The writer will be successful in creating a meaningful text if he / she could
make assumptions about the reader‟s state of knowledge. With spoken discourse, there is a
face-to-face interaction in which the meaning of the words used can be conveyed by non-
verbal behavior.

8
This study focuses on product of communicative process. Thus, though both
spoken and written advertisements are made to be informative and persuasive, the author
of the study just looks into lexical cohesive devices in written discourse of FFAs, not in the
spoken ones. The question is how we can analyze a discourse. This is nothing better than
basing on disciplines of discourse analysis.
1.1.3. Discourse Analysis
DA is concerned with the study of the relationship between language and the
contexts in which it is used.
In Vietnamese, discourse analysis has been attracting more and more attention from
a number of linguists. According to Nguyen Hoa (2000:11), discourse analysis can be
considered as “a study of how and for what purposes language is used in certain of context

of situation and the linguistic means to carry out these purposes.” He makes it clear that
the subject matter of discourse analysis is “language in use”. Only by language in use, can
we recognize the message that advertisers wish to convey. In this study, the writer would
like to take this viewpoint as the base.
1.1.4. Context in Discourse Analysis
The term “context” has been received various views from various scholars. Simply,
Nunan (1993:7) defines: “Context refers to the situation giving rise to the discourse, and
within which the discourse is embedded”. According to him, context consists of two types:
linguistic and non-linguistic. Linguistic context is in fact referred to as co-text. It surrounds
or accompanies the piece of discourse. Non-linguistic context was first noticed by the
anthropologist Malinowski who created the terms “context of situation” and “context of
culture”. Lately, Halliday & Hasan (1976) focus on the context of situation. With the
belief in the role of context to meaning, Halliday & Hasan (1989:12) suggest a three-
component model of context: field (of discourse), tenor (of discourse), and mode (of
discourse). The mode of context can be represented as follows:
a. Field of discourse refers to what is happening, to the nature of the social action
that is taking place.
b. Tenor of discourse refers to who is taking part, to the nature of the participants,
their statuses, and roles. It is the tenor that relays the relationship between the addressee
and the addresser.
c. Mode of discourse refers to what part the language is playing, what is it that the
participants are expecting the language to do for them in that situation.

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For short, these three notions could be understood in the simplest way:
- Field of discourse relates to the subject matter of discourse/ what the speaker talks about.
- Tenor of discourse relates to interpersonal relations between participants.
- Mode of discourse relates to channels o ways by which discourse is conducted.
In summary, field, mode, and tenor of discourse are in a dialectical relationship.
They collectively define the context of situation of a text. They are contextual variables of

what is called a register. Register reflects the degree of formality of a particular text by
using a characteristic set of lexical and grammatical features that are compatible with a
particular register. Halliday & Hasan (1976:23) defines “register” as: “The register is the
set of meanings, the configuration of semantic patterns that are typically drawn upon
under the specific conditions, along with words and structures that are used in the
realization of these meanings”.
A lower register is represented by the use of everyday vocabulary and fewer
complex grammatical forms, while a higher register requires the use of professional,
academic lexical items along with denser grammatical structures.
This study is concentrating on the concept of cohesion, which is usefully
supplemented by that of register. These two elements can be regarded together to
effectively define a text.
Discourse is studied not only from the perspective of register, but also from the
perspective of genre. In recent years, the term “genre” has been a controversial topic for a
large number of linguists. The group of systemic linguists put social context into context of
culture and context of situation, or genre and registers respectively. They believe that
genres are realized through registers, and registers are in turn realized through language.
Meanwhile, the second group of scholars sees the relationship between context and
language in quite different, in which genres are classified as smaller parts of registers.
This study follows the point of view in which genre is considered as a sub-type of
register, i.e. a register may include different genres; for example, a story can be a myth, a
legend, or a tale.
1.2. Cohesion
1.2.1.The concept of cohesion
According to Halliday & Hasan (1976:7), cohesion refers to the “non-structural
text-forming relations”. They state that “the concept of cohesion is a semantic one; it
refers to relations of meaning that exist within the text, and that define the text”. .

10
“Cohesion occurs where the interpretation of one element in the discourse is dependent on

that of another”.(Halliday & Hasan,1976:4). Vo Dai Quang (2006:27) and Nguyen Hoa
(2000:23) cohesion could be simply understood as “formal links or relationship which
exist between sentences that cause texts to cohere or stick together.”
Following is a brief introduction about Cohesion and text as the basement leading
to the analysis of cohesion.
Cohesion and text
In the seminal work Cohesion in English,( 1976:292), Halliday & Hasan say that,
“a text, as a semantic unit, is REALIZED in the form of sentences the expression of the
semantic unity of the text lies in the cohesion among the sentences of which it is
composed.”. They also state that in any text, every sentence except the first one has a
cohesive relation with the preceding sentence. Besides, they state that “a new text begins
where a sentence shows no cohesion with those that have preceded.”
Cohesion is a necessary but not sufficient condition for the creation of a text. What
creates text is the textual, or the component of the linguistic system. Cohesion is only one
part in this system, and cohesion plays an important role in the creation of text with its role
of providing texture. “Cohesion expresses the continuity that existed between one part of
the text and another”(Halliday & Hasan, 1976:299). Cohesion provides the text the
continuity, which enables readers or listeners to supply all the missing pieces necessary to
its interpretation.
Cohesion and Coherence
Let‟s take one example to see how these two notions contribute to the creation of a text.
Yesterday, I went to school with my friends at 11 am. Then I came back home and
had breakfast.
From lexical and grammatical point of view, the example above is perfectly correct.
However, it is not logical, and coherent. When reading it, everyone will find that it lacks
coherence. The reason is that the events in that utterance are not in logic order. After 11
am, one cannot have his meal called breakfast. All the clauses in the utterance are fine but
the order in which the processes or events occur is not chronological. In a nutshell, these
two sentences cannot belong to a text or cannot create a meaningful text or discourse.
In fact, cohesion is the network of different kinds of formal relationships that

provide links among various parts of a text, and “is expressed partly through grammar,

11
and partly through vocabulary” (Halliday & Hasan, 1976:5). Coherence, on the other
hand, is understood as the quality of being meaningful and unified of a text.
There are interrelationships between cohesion and coherence. If cohesion refers to
the linguistic elements that make a discourse semantically coherent, then coherence
involves with what makes it semantically meaningful. If so, cohesion is seen as one of the
ways of indicating coherence; in other words, cohesion is the realization of coherence, and
coherence is something created by the readers while reading the text.
In short, cohesion is mainly used to ensure or embody coherence by a system of
cohesive devices. They are essential elements that make a text or discourse different from
random sentences or utterances.
1.2.2. Classification of cohesion
It can be seen that a coherent text is a sequence of sentences or utterances which
seems to be linked; it contains words or phrases that enable the writer or speaker to
establish boundaries across sentences or utterances and help them to be tied together.
These words or phrases are considered cohesive devices. These cohesive devices are all
closely connected to create a coherent text. Halliday and Hasan (1976:29) identify five
main cohesive devices in English: reference, substitution, ellipsis, conjunction, and lexical
cohesion. The four first types can be grouped under the name of grammatical cohesion.
Therefore, the notion “cohesion” can be examined under two subtypes, grammatical and
lexical cohesion. According to Nguyen Hoa (2000:32), lexical cohesive devices are
divided into 4 kinds: reiteration, synonyms, antonyms, association. Here below indicates
subtypes of both grammatical and lexical cohesion from the viewpoint of Halliday and
Hasan( 1976:288, 1976:303-304) which will be taken as the classification basis of the
study.
Table 1: Types of cohesion
Grammatical Cohesion
Lexical Cohesion

Reference
Exophoric
Reiteration

Same word/ repetition
Endophoric
- personal
- demonstrative
Synonym/ near
synonym
- comparative
Super-ordinates
Substitution
Nominal substitution
General words
Verbal substitution
Collocation
Noun + Noun

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Clausal substitution
Verb + Noun
Ellipsis
Nominal ellipsis
Adjective + Noun
Verbal ellipsis
Verb + Verb
Clausal ellipsis
Adverb + Verb
Conjunction

Additive
Adverb + Adjective
Adversative
Adjective +
Preposition
Causal

Verb + Preposition
Temporal

Preposition + Noun
Others



The discourse with grammatical cohesion will not form a text unless the sentences
in that discourse are matched by cohesive relatives of lexical items. As stated before, the
scope of this study deals with only lexical cohesive devices or lexical cohesion which will
be discussed in details below.
Lexical cohesion was first advanced in terms of collocation by Firth (1957) and
later developed by Halliday (1961, 1966). Halliday & Hasan (1976:303) provide a
comprehensive treatment of “lexical cohesion”. They say “Lexical cohesion, as the name
implies, lexical; it involves a kind of choice that is open-ended, the selection of a lexical
item that is in some way related to one occurring previously”. Lexical cohesion is
categorized into two main phenomena termed reiteration and collocation. They state “all
lexical cohesion that is not covered by what we have called “reiteration” – and treat it
under the general heading of COLLOCATION, or collocational cohesion…” (Halliday &
Hasan, 1976:287)
Reiteration not only involves the repetition of the same lexical items, but also the
occurrence of a related item and the use of a general word to refer back to a lexical item. A

lexical item could refer back to another related item by having a common referent.
According to Halliday and Hasan (1976:278), reiteration can be classified into four types,
the same word, a synonym or near-synonym, a super-ordinate, and a general word.
“Reiteration is a form of lexical cohesion which involves the repetition of a lexical item, at
one end of the scale; the use of a general word to refer back to a lexical item, at the other end of
the scale; and a number of things in between- the use of a synonym, near-synonym, or super-
ordinate”.
Halliday and Hasan (1976: 278)

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This classification can be illustrated by the following example which I took out
from the book namely “Cohesion in English” by the two authors, Halliday & Hasan
(1976:280).
There is a boy climbing the old elm.
a. That elm isn‟t very safe.
b. That tree isn‟t very safe
c. That old thing isn‟t very safe.
In (a), elm is repeated, (b) selects the super-ordinate tree, and (c) the general word
thing is used.
Here below is a brief overview of these subtypes of reiteration.
Repetition
Repetition refers to the same lexical item with the same meaning occurring more
than once in the same discourse.
However, in the case repetition is overused in texts; the readers themselves may
feel a bit unpleasant on reading. Hence, it is realized by writers or copywriters to know
how to combine lexical repetition with other lexical devices.
Synonymy and Near- synonymy
As a matter of fact, for some certain words, repetition becomes more effective in
emphasizing an issue while for some others, expressing their meanings in different ways is
better. Synonymy refers to the relation between different words bearing the same meaning.

The synonyms can be replaced each other in order to avoid repetition in case it is not
necessary to repeat a word, and especially this can make the discourses flexible and help
not to bore the readers. Synonyms can be nouns, verbs, adjectives and both members of the
pair are the same part of speech.
There is a group in which words share the similar meanings but still cannot be
considered synonyms. These belong to another concept of lexical cohesion: near-
synonyms.
As just mentioned, near-synonymy refers to the relations between different words
with nearly the same meaning.
Synonym is defined as “a word or expression that has the same or nearly the same
meaning as another in the same language” (Oxford Advanced Learners‟ Dictionary of
Current English, 2000, Oxford University Press). This definition proves that the boundary
between synonyms and near-synonyms is by no means clear-cut.
Super-ordinates

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The category of super-ordinate refers to any items of which meaning includes that of the
earlier one. In general, a word that presents the previously mentioned ones with high generality is
called super-ordinate. According to Halliday & Hasan (1976:280), “the category of super-
ordinate…refers to any item whose meaning includes that of the earlier one.”
For instance, „vehicle” is a super-ordinate for “car”, “bus”, “train” in which
“car”, “bus”, and “train” are considered as branches of „vehicle”. They are grouped
namely “co-hyponyms”. It is commonly accepted that among super-ordinate and co-
hyponyms exists the sense relation.
General words
According to Halliday & Hasan, “Not all general words are used cohesively; in
fact, only the nouns are…” (1976:281). They also state that “the class of general noun is a
small set of nouns have generalized reference with the major noun classes, those such as
“human noun”: “place noun”, “fact noun” and the like.”
Examples are:

Person, people, man, girl, child (human)
Place (place)
Thing, object (object)
Question, idea (fact)
The class of “general noun” lies between grammatical and lexical cohesion. A
general noun in cohesive function is almost accompanied by the reference item “the” or a
demonstrative as an alternative. These items are important sources when analyzing
cohesion of any text.
The following is an illustration of using general word with cohesive function:
They are fixing the house. I lived in that place during my childhood.
“That place” is the general word. We can understand this word only if we refer
back to find out what “that place” generalizes for. We can also see the reference item
“that” before the word “place” which is the indication of cohesive relations between two
sentences.
Collocation
It is safe to say that many instances of cohesion are purely lexical, and independent
on the relation of reference. In other words, two lexical occurrences can be cohesive
without having the same referent or without bearing any referential relations. This is true
with another type of lexical cohesion: Collocation. With lexical reiteration, the nature of

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cohesive relation is relatedness of reference, whereas collocation occurs when lexical items
related to each other in terms of the form.
Collocation refers to lexical cohesion that is achieved through the association of lexical
items that regularly co-occur, these lexical items “tend to occur in similar environment”
(Halliday & Hasan, 1976:287). They illustrate collocation that “In general, any two lexical items
having the similar patterns of collocations- that is, tending to appear in similar contexts – will
generates a cohesive force if they occur in adjacent sentences”.(1976:286). From grammatical
point of view, lexical collocation occurs when two lexical items collocate in pairs directly. Let‟s
take an example: “There was a heavy rain last night.”

In this example appear two lexical items, that is, “heavy” and “rain”, which are
used together and collocated to make up an adjective- noun structure: heavy rain This
phrase illustrates grammatical collocation.
It is believed that collocation refers to the restrictions on how words can be used
together, for example, which prepositions are used with particular verbs, or which verbs
and nouns often occur together. Collocation should not be confused with idioms.
“Collocation is not only limited to a pair of words” (Halliday & Hasan, 1976:286),
but also occur among long cohesive chains, such as sky…sunshine…rain…cloudy. In this
case, collocation is explicitly referred to as “lexical collocation.” Such patterns may either
occur within the same sentence or across the sentence boundaries.
Here I would like to mention another way to classify collocation. According to
Hoang Van Van (2006:84-85), collocation can be classified into there subtypes:
Resultative, modificational, and contextual.
Resultative collocation includes the word items which represent a cause - effect
relation; for example, rain - wet, wind - blow.
Modificational collocation refers to the relation holding between analysis item and
one of its inherent qualities. E.g. rain - heavy, eat - full, sing - beautifully.
Contextual collocation differs from the other types of collocation in the sense that
the word items are concerned with the process and the participants. The lexical items in
this case are merely nouns and verbs. E.g. teacher - learn - student, house - build, grow -
vegetables, raise - animals.
Collocation is, to some extent, problematic in doing discourse analysis. In some
cases, it is difficult to decide whether a cohesive relation exists or not between two lexical
items in the discourse. Also, there is no limit to the items that can be used to express

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collocation, which may lead to the difficulty in listing out regularly co-occurring words
and phrases. As a matter of fact, collocation patterns will only be perceived by someone
who knows something about the subject at hand, as well as have the sensitive background
knowledge.

For short, when analyzing lexical cohesion reflected in a text, the most important
thing is to use common sense, combined with the knowledge they have of the nature and
structure of its vocabulary.



Chapter 2: An overview of Functional Food and
Functional Food Advertisements

In the previous chapter, we have mentioned the theoretical background of the study
with some key information on discourse and discourse analysis. In order to complete the
theoretical picture of this minor thesis, it is necessary to take into account also a brief
understanding on the controversial notion “Functional Foods” (FFs) in general and
“Functional Food Advertisements” (FFAs) in particular.
2.1. The notion of Functional Food
The term “functional foods” was first introduced in Japan in the mid-1980s and
refers to processed foods containing ingredients that aid specific bodily functions in
addition to being nhutritious. Clearly, most foods are functional in some way. What makes
a “functional food”, however, is its potential ability to positively affect health.
Benefits of FFs
Those functional foods that have the potential to improve health and well-being,
reduce the risk from, or delay the onset of, major diseases such as cardiovascular disease
(CVD), cancer and osteoporosis. Combined with a healthy lifestyle, FFs can make a positive
contribution to health and well being. In other words, FFs offer great potential to improve
health and/or help prevent certain diseases when taken as part of a balanced diet and healthy
lifestyle. FFs not only provide basic nutrients, but also prevent diseases and improve heath
due to their anti-oxygen elements. FFs may be categorized as whole foods, enriched foods,
fortified foods or enhanced foods. The general category of FFs includes processed food or

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foods fortified with health-promoting additives, like "vitamin-enriched" products. Fermented
foods with live cultures are considered functional foods with probiotic benefits.
Components of FFs
A functional food can be a natural whole food, a food to which a component has
been added, or a food from which a component has been removed by technological or
biotechnological means. It can also be a food in which the nature of one or more
components has been modified, or a food in which the bioavailability of one or more
components has been modified, or any combination of these possibilities.
FF range from fruits, vegetables, and whole grains, which are naturally high in
phytochemicals, to products in which a specific ingredient is added, removed, increased, or
decreased.
Examples of functional foods include foods that contain specific minerals,
vitamins, fatty acids or dietary fibre, foods with added biologically active substances such
as phytochemicals or other antioxidants and probiotics that have live beneficial cultures
Consumers of FFs
A functional food may be targeted at the whole population or for particular groups,
which may be defined, for example, by age or by genetic constitution.
Health claims of functional food products
Functional food products typically include health claims on their label touting their
benefits: for example: "Cereal is a significant source of fiber. Studies have shown that an
increased amount of fiber in one's diet can decrease the risk of certain types of cancer in
individuals."
There are two types of health claims relevant to functional foods, which must
always be valid in the context of the whole diet and must relate to the amount of foods
normally consumed: “Promote health” and “Reduce the risk of disease”
1. TYPE A: "Enhanced function” claims refer to specific physiological,
psychological functions and biological activities beyond their established role in growth,
development and other normal functions of the body.
2. TYPE B: "Reduction of disease-risk” claims relate to the consumption of a food
or food component that might help reduce the risk of a specific disease or condition

because of specific nutrients or non-nutrients contained within it (e.g. folate can reduce a
woman's risk of having a child with neural tube defects, and sufficient calcium intake may
help to reduce the risk of osteoporosis in later life).

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However, some claims will fall outside of the purview of the Food and Drug
Administration and be accompanied by the disclaimer: “This product is not intended to
diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease." Such a disclaimer typically accompanies
supplements rather than foods, but since the definition of functional food is still evolving
and somewhat amorphous, a functional food may find itself bearing the warning.
Although manufacturers may use health claims to market their products, the FDA's
stated intention is that the purpose of health claims is to benefit consumers by providing
information on healthful eating patterns that may help reduce the risk of disease such as
heart disease and cancer.
As far as I know, Vietnamese functional foods are realized with the health claim
usually labeled on the product, that is, “Thực phẩm này không phải là thuốc, không có tác
dụng thay thế thuốc chữa bệnh”. (This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or
prevent any disease.) In other words, FFs should not be considered to be a kind of
medicine which can cure disease or replace medicine.
2.2. Functional Food Advertisements
In the previous part, I attempted to examine the notion “functional food”. In this
part, I shall first have a brief look at the notion “advertising” with the functions, strategies,
and languages investigated. Then, Functional Food Advertisements will be taken into
consideration in terms of the context and the structure.
2.2.1. The functions of advertising
The informational and directive functions would dominate in advertising discourse.
Besides, another function of advertising is the establishment of multidimensional
relationships, between individuals, companies, brands, products, services, and texts. For
example, there is always an immediately relationship between the reader of the
advertisement (so-called the advertisee) and the text itself, and the relationship between the

advertisee and advertiser.
Last but not least, advertising is functioned to build consumers. Advertisements
should be flexible and adaptable to meet the consumers‟ changing demands. The
advertisers need to assume background knowledge about their advertisees in the process of
creating an advertisement. Basing on the consumers‟ characteristics, such as age, sex,
income, desire, as well as life expectation, the advertisers try to produce impressive and
informative advertisements. For short, when advertising, the target audience is very
important. It changes the appearance and style of an advertisement to suit their lifestyle.

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2.2.2. The strategies of advertising
Truly, it is challenging for advertisers to create an informative and persuasive
advertisement. To have such effective advertisements, they have to make full use of the
two main strategies, verbal and non-verbal ones.
Verbal strategies: Verbal strategies refer not only to lexical choices but syntax choices
as well. Language choice plays a vital role in the success of an advertisement.
Non-verbal strategies: Non-verbal strategies are known as advertisers‟ skills of
using non-linguistic features such as pictures, sounds, forms of words, and so on. Thanks
to the adding of pictures of products, the customers find it easier to recognize products.
2.2.3. The language of advertising
Language of advertising is somehow different to normal, everyday language. The
text used in advertisements that have been printed, recorded, uploaded and so on, is there
for a purpose. The language of advertising is “block language”, which is structured in
terms of single words or phrases rather than the more highly organized units of clauses or
sentences. This kind of language can be exploited for advertisements because it can help
concentrate readers/ viewers‟ attention on intended essential information. Another reason
to apply this kind of language in advertisements is for economic purposes. Expenditure can
be cut down if advertisers can be able to express ideas and messages in brief. For this,
single words and short phrases are certain to be more suitable, favorable, and effective than
long clauses or sentences.

Advertising can be divided into two main types: Commercial and Non-commercial
advertising.
Non-commercial advertising is one whose main purpose is not to sell anything to
make a profit for a company or specific individual. It could be used for the charity work,
politics activities, it can be the propaganda for stopping smoking, using drug, or stop
family violence or being against HIV, AIDS.
Commercial advertising much relates to commercial purposes. It aims at selling
goods, which requires the advertisers to bring products‟ information to customers in the
most effective and clearest ways.
FFAs belong to the second kind – commercial advertising because of the reason
that the advertisers‟ purpose is urging readers to buy the products.
2.2.4. General Description of Functional Food advertisements
2.2.4.1. Context of English and Vietnamese FFAs

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a. Genre
A functional food advertisement belongs to commercial advertisement genre, one
of genres of discourse “magazines”.

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b. Register:
FFAs, certainly are advertisements in general, so they are registered by the
language of advertising. Therefore, they are certain to share some characteristics of
advertisements, which are mentioned earlier.
c. Field
The field of FFAs is nothing more than the field of business. These advertisements
aim at introducing kinds of different functional foods to the consumers and then urging
them indirectly to buy these products. For this, language used in FFAs tends to be
persuasive, informative, and nice.
d. Tenor

The writer‟s subject position and the reader‟s of FFAs are not fixed. The writer can
simultaneously be readers‟ adviser, entertainer, and seller.
The writer/producer of the text, who has profound understanding of functional
food, and to some extent, sufficient language competence, and the reader/interpreter of the
text is remote from each other at the time of writing. Both English and Vietnamese FFAs
chosen for analysis are written by company owners or copywriters. The target readership
can mainly be those who are interested in health and beauty. It seems that the writer knows
the readers personally; they often speak as though they already know the reader, their
thoughts, attitudes, likes and dislikes. To do that, the writer employs many techniques to
cause the reader to interact with the text. For example, the use of pronoun is also a way in
which the writer creates a relationship with the reader. To be more specific, by using the
pronoun “you”, which covers anyone who reads the text, the text producer appears to
address the reader directly. Another example is the interesting use of “we” in which writers
includes the readers.
e. Mode: The mode of FFAs is in the form of written discourse. FFAs are presented
in one popular kind of publication- magazines- which is a monologue discourse. Language
used in FFAs must be concrete and comprehensible so that the readers of every age and of
all language competences can understand.
Under “mode”, some grammatical features of FFAs are investigated as follows:
- Length of discourse
For the business benefits it is recommended by the writers or copywriters that
advertisements should be brief, informative and impressive. The writers are always aware
of structuring the information to create an effective advertisement which can not only