AND BUT OR AS COHESIVE DEVICES IN ENGLISH WRITTEN DISCOURSE a CONTRASTIVE ANALYSIS WITH VIETNAMESE EQUIVALENTS

MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING
HANOI OPEN UNIVERSITY

M.A THESIS
AND/BUT/OR AS COHESIVE DEVICES IN ENGLISH WRITTEN DISCOURSE
- A CONTRASTIVE ANALYSIS WITH VIETNAMESE EQUIVALENTS

(And/But/Or như các phương tiện liên kết trong văn bản
ản tiế
tiếng Anh
– Phân tích đối
ối chiếu
chi với các yếu tố tương đương trong tiếếng Việt )

NGUYỄN
NGUY
THỊ THU HƯƠNG
Field: English Linguistics
Code: 60220201


MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING
HANOI OPEN UNIVERSITY
....................o0o.....................

M.A THESIS
AND/BUT/OR AS COHESIVE DEVICES IN ENGLISH WRITTEN DISCOURSE
- A CONTRASTIVE ANALYSIS WITH VIETNAMESE EQUIVALENTS

(And/But/Or như các phương tiện liên kết trong văn bản tiếng Anh
– Phân tích đối chiếu với các yếu tố tương đương trong tiếng Việt)

NGUYỄN THỊ THU HƯƠNG
Field: English Linguistics
Code: 60220201

Supervisor: Assoc. Prof. Dr. PHAN VAN QUE

Hanoi, 2017
ii


CERTIFICATE OF ORIGINALITY
I, the undersigned, hereby certify my authority of the study project report
entitled(AND/BUT/OR AS COHESIVE DEVICES IN ENGLISH WRITTEN
DISCOURSE- A CONTRASTIVE ANALYSIS WITH VIETNAMESE
EQUIVALENTS) submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the
degree of Master in English Language. Except where the reference is indicated, no
other person’s work has been used without due acknowledgement in the text of the
thesis.
Hanoi, 2017

Nguyen Thi Thu Huong

Approved by
Supervisor: Assoc. Prof. Dr. PHAN VAN QUE

(Signature and full name)
Date:……………………

iii

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I would like to express my thanks to those who have assisted my study.
First and foremost, I would like to register my deep gratitude to Dr. Phan
Văn Quế. As a supervisor, he has always been willing to give not only invaluable
instructions and suggestions but also support and encouragement, without which
this study would not be completed.
In carrying out this study, I am also indebted to many teachers of
Postgraduate Studies Department who have enthusiastically given lectures in my
M.A. Course.
My thanks also go to my colleagues at Lai Chau Boarding high school for
their invaluable comments and assistance during the time I was completing my
study.
The support extended to me by my family and friends has been
immeasurable. I wish to express my deep gratitude to my parents for their love and
encouragement while I was doing this study.
In my study, it is inevitable that the ideas of many writers in the field are
reflected and developed. To all the authors of the publications in the list of
references, I offer my sincere thanks.

iv


ABSTRACT
This thesis deals with the three coordinators AND/BUT/OR as cohesive
devices in English written discourse within the sentence level.
This thesis aims to give a systematic presentation of the uses of the three
central coordinators AND/BUT/OR as cohesive devices and their frequency of
occurrence

in

English

written

discourse,

make

contrastive

analysis

of

AND/BUT/OR as cohesive devices and their equivalent realizations in Vietnamese
and put forward some suggestions as effort to help English-major students at Lai
Chau Boarding high school to overcome the consequences of interference when
learning writing skill.
The methods of this study is that descriptive and comparative analysis are
used to understand the sematic and syntactic of AND/BUT/OR in English and the
equivalents of Vietnamese.
The thesis gives a systematic presentation of the performance of these
coordinators as cohesive devices. Different semantic implications of each
coordinator are given in the study to prove that the coordinators examined appear to
be more flexible than their logical meanings. Other implications that have not been
mentioned before are also searched for.
The thesis also makes a contrastive analysis of AND/BUT/OR in English and

their equivalents VÀ/NHƯNG/HAY-HOẶC in Vietnamese in order to find out
whether they are the only equivalents of AND/BUT/OR in all contexts.
Last but not least, the thesis also mentions some suggestions for teaching
writing skill at Lai Chau Boarding high school.
The thesis is open to all potential criticism and comments.

v


LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS
E: English
V: Vietnamese
Adv: Adverbs
Conj.: Conjunction

vi


LIST OF TABLES AND FIGURES
Table 1:The reference, conjunction and Reiteration.................................................22
Table 2:The frequency of the implications of AND.................................................31
Table 3: The frequencty of The implication of BUT................................................33
Table 4: The frequency of the implications of OR...................................................36
Table 5: The frequency of The Implications of AND/BUT/OR..............................37
Diagram 1: The frame work of contrastive analysis and/but/or as cohesive devices
in English written discourse- A contrastive analysis with Vietnamese
equivalents................................................................................................................42
Table6: Vietnamese equivalents to AND denoting the examined implication “And”
“Và”..........................................................................................................................52
Table 7: Vietnamese equivalents to BUT denoting the examined

implications...............................................................................................................54
Table 8: Vietnamese equivalents to OR denoting the examined
implications...............................................................................................................56

vii


TABLE OF CONTENTS

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS .................................................................................... iv
ABSTRACT ............................................................................................................ v
LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS ................................................................................. vi
LIST OF TABLES AND FIGURES ......................................................................vii
Chapter 1: INTRODUCTION................................................................................. 1
1.1.

Rationale for the study................................................................................ 1

1.2.

Aims and objectives of the study ................................................................ 3

1.3. Research questions ........................................................................................ 4
1.4. Methods of the study ..................................................................................... 4
1.6. Significance of the study ............................................................................... 5
1.7. Design of the study ........................................................................................ 5
Chapter 2: LITERATURE REVIEW ....................................................................... 7
2.1. Previous studies ............................................................................................. 7
2.2. Theoretical background ................................................................................. 8
2.2.1. Discourse ................................................................................................ 8

2.2.2. Cohesion ............................................................................................... 12
2.2.3. Conjunctions as Cohesive Devices ........................................................ 27
2.3. Theoretical framework ................................................................................ 29
2.3.1. Features of And/ But/ Or ...................................................................... 29
2.3.2. AND/OR/BUT ...................................................................................... 31
2.4. Summary ..................................................................................................... 39
Chapter 3: AND/BUT/OR AS COHESIVE DEVICES IN ENGLISH WRITTEN
DISCOURSE - A CONTRASTIVE ANALYSIS WITH VIETNAMESE
EQUIVALENTS ................................................................................................... 40
3.1. Implication of Vietnamese equivalents of AND/BUT/OR in English........... 40
3.1.1. Vietnamese equivalents of AND/BUT/OR in English ........................... 40
3.1.2. A contrastive analysis of AND/BUT/OR as cohesive devices in English
with Vietnamese equivalents and implications ................................................ 44
3.2. CONSTRASTIVE ANALYSIS BETWEEN AND vs VÀ, BUT vs NHUNG,
OR vs HAY/HOẶC............................................................................................ 48
3.2.1. AND vs. VÀ ......................................................................................... 48
viii


3.2.2.BUT vs. NHƯNG .................................................................................. 52
3.2.3. OR vs. HAY/HOẶC .............................................................................. 54
3.3. Summary ..................................................................................................... 55
Chapter 4: APPLICATION OF AND/OR/BUT IN WRITING .............................. 57
4.1. The actual status of teaching the subject of writing in Lai Chau Board School
........................................................................................................................... 57
4.2. Suggestions for teaching and materials ........................................................ 59
4.3. Some types of exercises for improving the writing skill of students in Lai
Chau Board School ............................................................................................ 60
4.4. Summary ..................................................................................................... 63
Chapter 5: CONCLUSION .................................................................................... 65

5.1.

Concluding remarks ................................................................................ 65

5.2.

Limitation of the study ............................................................................. 67

5.3.

Recommendations/Suggestions for further study ..................................... 67

REFERENCES ...................................................................................................... 69

ix


Chapter 1: INTRODUCTION
1.1.

Rationale for the study
No one denies the importance of the English language in the present time as

a global language because it has become more dominant around the world than any
other languages. It is used as an official language in more than 44 countries and has
played an important role in dealing with international relations especially in such
fields as science and technology, business, commerce and diplomacy. These reasons
motivate people all over the world to learn English as a foreign language.
However, learning any foreign languages in general and English in
particular is not easy. It is a lengthy and effortful process to master English as a

native speaker because of a variety of factors. Linguistic knowledge of English
accounts for learners’ ability to combine phonemes into morphemes, morphemes
into words, and words into sentences. That means, when people speak or write they
have to convey a certain message by organizing their thoughts and ideas into strings
of words to produce sentences, and then combine sentences together to create higher
units of discourse. But how to combine sentences to each other and to the rest of the
context has been a big question for linguists. Communication is possible only when
sentences which create discourse hang together so that discourse has its unity and
the product of our creation would make sense. In other words, knowledge of
cohesion and coherence is essential in discourse construction and necessary for
successful communication. In discourse, cohesion has an interrelation with
coherence; the former is a guide to and part of the latter in both spoken and written
language. Awareness of coherence as a quality that makes a text conform to a
consistent world picture, to experiences, culture, and convention and cohesive
devices as the linguistic means by which elements of a text are arranged and
connected is vital for learners of English.
Up to now, there have been many studies by various linguists on this aspect.
Each discusses the issue from different angles. Thus, they give out different ways of
classifying and naming cohesion. In English, Quirk (1972) primarily covers three
main factors of sentence connection. The first is the implication in the semantic

1


content. A reader normally assumes that there is a relationship between sentences.
The second is lexical equivalence which means successive sentences are connected
to some extent through their vocabulary or the equivalence in the lexical items or
repetition of phrase. The third is syntactic devices which are grouped under
following entries: time and place relaters, logical relaters, substitution, discourse
reference, comparison, ellipsis and structural parallelism.

In 1976, with the book Cohesion in English, Halliday and Hasan say that
the concept of cohesion accounts for the essential semantic relations whereby any
passage of speech or writing is enabled to function as text. They discuss the
cohesive relationships under five main headings: reference, substitution, ellipsis,
conjunction and lexical cohesion. And the most apparent type of explicitly marked
cohesive relationships existing between one sentence or clause and another in
discourse is indicated by conjunctions. Unlike Quirk (1972), they treat time and
place relaters, logical connectors, discourse reference, comparison as reference
items.
Guy Cook (1989) on the other hand, includes also verb forms, parallelism,
repetition and lexical chain as cohesive devices – formal links within the sentence
or across the sentence boundaries. What is more, Brown and Yule (1983) go into
the study of how to interpret a text basing on cohesive devices especially reference
in text. They emphasize on types of reference. They include endophora (anaphora
and cataphora) and exphora. The former means reference which can be interpreted
depending on the context of the text itself. The latter means reference which can be
interpreted relying on textual context but on situation (the factor lies outside
language elements). Winifred Crombie’s investigation (1985), however, is fully
concentrated on semantic relations in discourse and the study of which, for
Crombie, involves the study of discourse values.
In Vietnamese, Tran Ngoc Them (1985) has written an insightful book about
cohesion. He discusses ten cohesive devices namely repetition, antithesis,
synonymic substitution, association, linearity, pronoun substitution, weak ellipsis,
loose conjunction, strong ellipsis and tight conjunction. Diep Quang Ban (2004),

2


however, states that reference, substitution, ellipsis, conjunction and lexical
cohesion are five major cohesive devices.

Based on the knowledge, many MA theses about cohesive devices were also
conducted. Most of them made an analysis of cohesive devices in certain types of
discourse such as information and communication technology advertisements,
letters of enquiry, job application letters and business contract discourse.
Although a number of theses on cohesive devices in different types of
discourse were conducted, they didn’t focus on any single word as a cohesive
device in order to have a deeper analysis. That has given the author of this study the
idea to examine the uses of conjunctions as cohesive devices in English written
discourse. And the three conjunctions AND/BUT/OR are chosen as they are the
most central coordinators.
1.2.

Aims and objectives of the study
Aim:
With the above mentioned background, this study is targeted at:
- Giving a systematic presentation of the uses of the three central

coordinators AND/BUT/OR as cohesive devices and their frequency of occurrence
in English written discourse.
- Making contrastive analysis of AND/BUT/OR as cohesive devices and
their equivalent realizations in Vietnamese.
- Putting forward some suggestions as effort to help English-major students
at Lai Chau Boarding high school to overcome the consequences of interference
when learning writing skill.
Objectives:
- To understand AND/OR/BUT in English with semantic and syntactic
meanings and features
- To find out the equivalent of And/or/but in Vietnamese and apply it in
writing

3


1.3. Research questions
In order to achieve the objectives stated as above, the study is meant to find
out the answer to three following research questions:
How are the three coordinators AND/BUT/OR used as cohesive devices in
English written discourse?
What are the equivalents of AND/BUT/OR in Vietnamese?
What are the similarities and differences of AND/ BUT/ OR in English from
VÀ/NHƯNG/HAY-HOẶC in Vietnamese?
1.4. Methods of the study
This study of AND/BUT/OR as cohesive devices in English written
discourse is based on the communicative view-point of language teaching and
learning. Therefore, the methods of descriptive and comparative analysis are used to
understand the sematic and syntactic of AND/BUT/OR in English and the
equivalents of Vietnamese. The study is presented in order from general theories to
detailed descriptions, with theories presented first, then examples given to clarify
the theories.
For the data, The author has chosen at random the samples from several
written discourse types such as novels, short stories, magazines and newspapers.
The data are also selected from many different grammar books. Firstly, the data are
analyzed to identify discourse devices, their frequency of occurrence in English.
Then the contrastive analysis between AND/BUT/OR in English and their
realizations in Vietnamese are made. All of this will lead to the point of finding
effective solutions to improve writing skill of students at Lai Chau Boarding high
school.
1.5.Scope of the study
The scope of this study, however, allows a very limited choice of one aspect
of discourse analysis, that is, cohesion in English. Within a limited time and

knowledge as well as shortage of reference materials, it is not the author’s ambition
to investigate various types of cohesive devices but discuss only the three
conjunctions AND/BUT/OR – their performance as means of cohesion and their

4


frequency of concurrence in English and in Vietnamese. AND/BUT/OR will be
discussed as cohesive devices within the sentence, in other words, between clauses
in a sentence.
In the last part, implications, this study is limited to grade 12 students at Lai
Chau Boarding high school and writing skill only.
1.6.Significance of the study
Theoretically: This study contributes to verifying significance related to
linguistic theories in discourse analysis by providing learners of English with some
theoretical base and fundamental background for clarifying the relationships that are
linguistically encoded by virtue of conjunctions in general and AND/BUT/OR in
particular.
Practically: This study helps learners of English be more aware of the role of
AND/BUT/OR as cohesive devices in creating discourse. Thus, the study may help
learners to avoid errors easily made by the negative interference of most non-native
speakers. Furthermore, this study can make a certain contribution to teaching and
learning English as a foreign language owing to some suggested exercises in the last
part.
1.7.Design of the study
The study is divided into three parts as below
The first part is the introduction, including rationale, objectives, methods,
scope, significances and organization of the study.
The second part is the development, including five chapters.
Chapter 1:IntroductionA presentation of some theoretical preliminaries

needed for the study of coordinators AND/BUT/OR as cohesive devices in English
written discourse. Within the chapter, discourse will be studied to highlight the
function of conjunctions in creating discourse. There is a better focus on
conjunctions and cohesive devices.
Chapter 2: Literature ReviewA detailed description of the three
coordinators AND/BUT/OR as cohesive devices.

5


Chapter 3: Findings and DiscussionA comparative analysis between the
coordinators AND/BUT/OR and Vietnamese equivalents in which Vietnamese is
regarded as the compared language with English – the target one. The purpose of
the comparison is to identify the Vietnamese linking system equivalent to the
implications by AND/BUT/OR.
Chapter 4: Application of The Research FindingsSome implications for
teaching writing skill at Lai Chau Boarding high school.
The third part is the conclusion.
Chapter 5: ConclusionThis is to summarize the thesis by showing the
achievement of the objectives of the study and the effectiveness of the methods
used. Then the limitations of the study are given. Some suggestions for further study
are also included at the end to promise the continuance of the author’s future work.
Reference

6


Chapter 2: LITERATURE REVIEW
2.1. Previous studies
Josephine B.Alarcon and Katrina Ninfa S. Morales (2011) with the title of

“Grammatical cohesion in students’ argumentative essay” This study analyzed
quantitatively and qualitatively the cohesive devices including and/or/but used by
undergraduate students in their argumentative essay.
Besma Azzouz (2009) with the title “A Discourse analysis of
Grammaticalcohesion in Student’s writing” about some inappropriate uses of
grammatical cohesive devices are easily noticed concerning the total use of those
devices. In addition, some grammatical cohesive devices are widely used but
inappropriately; and some of them are less used but appropriately. Students’ use of
grammatical cohesive devices mainly appears with the use of conjunctions because
they are most probably known by learners; however, most of the conjunction
devices are used inappropriately. Also, it is remarked that in each type of
grammatical cohesive devices used there is always a predominant device.
According to Seungbok Lee (1996) with the title “Different Cohesive
Devices in English Prose by Korean and American College students” about the
difficulties and weakness in using proper cohesive devices in conjunctions,
pronouns, prepositions.
Afnan Bahaziq (2016) about “ Cohesive Devices in Written Discourse: A
Discourse Analysis of a Student’s Essay Writing” about the most grammatical
devices used are reference and conjunction. On the contrary, there is little evidence
of using lexical devices. Although the essay is somewhat cohesive, some areas still
need improvement.
According to Hoang Trung Thong (1998), conjunctions are words expressing
the grammatical relations used to join the components in sentences or in phrases.
Conjunction do not make sense in terms of vocabulary and grammar, especially
they never keep functions as subject or predicate in a sentence.
From the view Diep Quang Ban (1993), Vietnamese conjunctions are arranged into
two principal groups: subordinating and coordinating conjunctions.

7

According to Le Thi Bich (2000) about the paper of “ A contrastive analysis
of English coordinators and/or/but and Vietnamese equivalents” merely contrasted
the typical coordinating the conjunctions and/or/but in English and Vietnamese
equivalents.
According to the research of Nguyễn Quốc Minh in University of Pedagogy,
Class 4B06 with the title “Contrastive Analysis of English and Vietnamese
Conjunctions , “and”-“và” and “but”-“nhưng” Grammatically and Pragmatically” .
This research could show that conclude about their similarities and differences in
usage and discuss only the similarities and differences in grammatical and
pragmatic meanings between the two pairs of conjunctions “and – và” and “but –
nhưng” at sentence level.
The above research has found out the theory and symmetric of the literature review
about And/But/ Or in writing discourse with the meaning and function, but there is
no previous before finding out and/or/but in English and the equivalents of
And/or/but in Vietnamese in semantic and syntactic features. This research will
show the new ideas on it.
2.2. Theoretical background
2.2.1. Discourse
2.2.1.2. Discourse and Text
In the history of linguistics, many different definitions of discourseand text are
given by different linguists. Let us, first of all, look at the following definitions of
discourse which take our greatest attention.
Longman Dictionary of Language Teaching and Applied Linguistics (1989) defines:
“Discourse is a general term for examples of language use; i.e. language has been
produced as the result of an act of communication.”
Widdowson (1979) states: “Discourse is a use of sentences to perform acts of
communication which cohere into larger communication units, ultimately
establishing a rhetorical pattern which characterizes the pieces of language as a
whole as a kind of communication.”

8


Crystal (1992) says: “Discourse is a continuous stretch of language larger than a
sentence, often constituting a coherent unit such as sermon, argument, joke or a
narrative.”
Guy Cook (1989) classifies language into two different types as potential
objects of study: one abstracted in order to teach a language or literacy or to study
how the rules of language work; and another which has been used to communicate
something and is felt to be coherent. This latter kind of language – language in use
for communication is called discourse. It is defined as “a stretch of language
perceived to be meaningful, unified and purposive.”
Nunan (1993) defines: “Discourse can be defined as a stretch of language
consisting of several sentences which are perceived as being related in some way.
And the sentences are related not only in terms of the ideas they share but also in
terms of the jobs they perform within the discourse, that is, in terms of their
functions.”
From these extracts it can be seen that the term discourse is understood and
defined differently. Each definition has its own values in the field of linguistics.
However, for the purpose of this study, I would like to pay more attention to the
following definition given by Halliday and Hasan (1989). They give a simple
definition: “We can define text (discourse) in the simplest way perhaps by saying
that it is language that is functional.”
Above are some definitions of discourse. What about text? Is text the same or
different from discourse? This has become a big question for many linguists since
confusion of these two terms may result in the failures of discourse analysis. In fact,
there is disagreement about the meaning of these two terms.
For some linguists, discourse is considered to differ from text and should be
kept separate. Crystal (1992) stated that text should be used for writing and

discourse for speech. Cook (1989) considered text is a stretch of language
interpreted formally, without context whereas discourse is a stretch of language in
use, perceived to be meaningful, unified and purposive.

9


For other linguists, text and discourse refer to one and the same subject and
may be used interchangeably. According to the above mentioned definition of
discourse by Halliday & Hasan, text is used to refer to discourse; they see text as a
“semantic unit” characterized by cohesion. Halliday & Hasan (1976) stated: “A text
is a passage of discourse which coherent in these two regards: it is coherent
withrespect to the context of situation and therefore consistent in register; and it is
coherent with respect to itself and therefore cohesive”. Brown & Yule (1983) argue
that “text is the representative of discourse and the verbal record of a
communicative act”. Nunan (1976) used the term text to refer to any written record
of communicative event. The event itself may involve oral language or written
language. He reserved the term discourse to refer to the interpretation of the
communicative event in context.
To sum up, it seems to be difficult to make a clear distinction between these
two terms. Whether discourse and text refer to the same thing or not is still a
controversial issue. And, of course, it is not our intention to do this in this study. In
other words, in this study, the term discourse will be used with the same meaning as
text, and the data are collected in such a way as to contain only the language in
communication.
As far as the scope of discourse is concerned, discourse refers not only to
spoken interactions but also to written words. And the study of discourse, either
spoken or written is known as discourse analysis. In other words, the term
Discourse Analysis is used to cover the study of spoken and written interaction.
Discourse analysts study language in use: written text of all kinds, and spoken data

from conversation to highly institutionalized forms of talk. Thus, for the purpose of
this study, it is necessary to point out the differences between spoken and written
discourse in the following part.
According to McCarthy (1991), Discourse analysis deals with the study of
the relationship between the language and the context in which it is used. Moreover,
The analysis of discourse is concerned with the analysis of language in use.

10


According to Brown and Yule (1983), there are three views of discourse
analysis, namely sentence as text, object as product and discourse as process .Since
this research concerns with article as printed text, the researcher uses the second
view, text as product. Moreover, Brown and Yule (1983:196) state that there are
producers and receivers of sentences or extended texts, but the analysis concentrates
solely on the product, that is words on the page. The analysis of the printed text
itself does not involve any consideration on how the product is produced or how it
is received. The approach used in text as product view is the cohesion view of the
relationship between sentences in a printed text.
Austin(1962), Hymes(1964), Halliday and Hassan(1976), Grice(1975),
M.A.K. Halliday (1973), Sinclair and Coulthard (1977), Van Dijk (1972) and many
others. McCarthy (1991) state that: Discourse Analysis has grown into a wide
ranging and heterogeneous disciplinewhich finds its unity in the description of
language above the sentence and an interest in the contexts and cultural influences
which effect language in use (1991).
2.2.1.2. Spoken and Written Discourse
Spoken and written discourses represent different modes for expressing
linguistic meanings. Examples of spoken discourse are conversations, interviews,
lectures…whereas letters, stories, novels…are written discourse. Despite some
similarities, these two forms of discourse are basically different from each other.

The major difference between them is rooted from the difference between spoken
and written language.
Apart from obvious differences between speaking and writing like the fact
that writing includes some medium which keeps record of the conveyed message
while speaking involves only air, there are certain dissimilarities that are less
apparent.
The first is lexical density – the density with which the information is
presented. Written language has more lexical or content words per clause, thus it is
dense whereas spoken language is sparse. In other words, written language is more
densely packed with information than spoken language.

11


The second feature is complexity of grammar which is typical of spoken
language. In spoken language we could not see clearly sentence or paragraph
boundaries and the sentences are less structured. There are many incomplete
sentences with little subordination. Meanwhile written language complies of
complete sentences with subordination, rich lexis and frequent modifications via
adjectives and adverbs. They tend to be extremely simple in their grammatical
structure).
The last feature is situation. With written language the situation has to be
inferred from the text as there is no common situation, as there is in face-to-face
interaction. In addition, the words themselves must carry all of the shades of
meaning which in face-to-face interaction can be conveyed by non-verbal behavior.
Then again, there is no opportunity for the readers to signal that they do not
understand. The writer must make assumptions about the readers’ state of
knowledge.
Naturally, this division into two ways of producing discourse is quite
straightforward but we could not say that this language is better than the other.

However, it is a fact that written language gives us a more understanding of the
systematic feature of language. Therefore, written discourse often has a neat
message organization, division of paragraphs, good layout and the writer is
frequently able to consider the content of his work for almost unlimited period of
time which makes it more coherent, having complex syntax. Written discourse is
more specific, more exact and more coherent than spoken discourse. These are the
reasons why this study focuses on written discourse only.
When talking about discourse we can not leave behind one of its very key
technical terms, that is cohesion which will be discussed in the next part.
2.2.2. Cohesion
2.2.2.1. The Concept of Cohesion
Cohesion occurs where the interpretation of some element in the discourse is
dependent on that of another. The concept of cohesion is a semantic one, it refers to
relations of meaning that exist within the text, and that define it as a text. According

12


Halliday and Hasan (1956), The one presupposes the other, in the sense that it
cannot be effectively decoded except by resource to it. Moreover, Cohesion is a
semantic relation between an element in the text and some other element that is
crucial to the interpretation of it.
When reading any text it is obvious that it is not merely made up of a set of
unrelated sentences, but that these sentences are in fact connected to each other
through the use of two linguistic phenomenon, namely cohesion and coherence. As
Morris and Hirst (1991) point out, cohesion relates to the fact that the elements of a
text (e.g. clauses) ‘tend to hang together’; while coherence refers to the fact that
‘there is sense (or intelligibility) in a text.
Observing the interaction between textual units in terms of these properties is
one way of analysing the discourse structure of a text. Most theories of discourse

result in a hierarchical tree-like structure that reflects the relationships between
sentences or clauses in a text. These relationships may, for example, highlight
sentences in a text that elaborate, reiterate or contradict a certain theme. Meaningful
discourse analysis like this requires a true understanding of textual coherence which
in turn often involves looking beyond the context of the text, and drawing from realworld knowledge of events and the relationships between them.
Hasan, in her paper on ‘Coherence and Cohesive Harmony’ (1984),
hypothesises that the coherence of a text can be indirectly measured by analysing
the degree of interaction between cohesive chains in a text. Analysing cohesive
relationships in this manner is a more manageable and less computationally
expensive solution to discourse analysis than coherence analysis. For example,
Morris and Hirst (1991) note that, unlike research into cohesion, there has been no
widespread agreement on the classification of different types of coherence
relationships. Furthermore, they note that even humans find it more difficult to
identify and agree on textual coherence because, although identifying cohesion and
coherence are subjective tasks, coherence requires a definite ‘interpretation of
meaning’, while cohesion requires only an understanding that terms are about ‘the

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same thing’. To get a better idea of the difference between the two, consider the
following example:
After a night of heavy drinking the party fizzled out at around 6am. They
then ate breakfast while watching the sunrise. These sentences are only weakly
cohesive. Consequently, a deeper understanding of the concept ‘morning’ makes the
existence of a coherence relationship between the two sentences highly plausible.
However, in the more usual case where an area of text shares a set of cohesively
related terms, Morris and Hirst hypothesise that cohesion is a useful indicator of
coherence in text especially since the identification of coherence itself is not
computationally feasible at present. Stairmand (1996) further justifies this

hypothesis by emphasising that although cohesion fails to account for grammatical
structure (i.e. readability) in the way that coherence does, cohesion can still account
for the organisation of meaning in a text, and so, by implication, its presence
corresponds to some form of structure in that text.
When speaking or writing we often want to make some links with other
things that we are saying or writing. There are several ways of doing this and they
provide cohesion in the use of language. So what is cohesion?
Actually, the term text in Indo-European languages derived from the Latin
word exium meaning cohesion, so the concept of cohesion is closely connected with
text. According to Halliday and Hasan (1979), “The concept of cohesion is a
semantic one; it refers to relations of meaning that exist within the text, and that
define it as a text.” They also point out that cohesion often occurs where the
interpretation of some element in the discourse is dependent on that of another.
From the above definitions, it can be concluded that cohesion is a term used
to mention the formal link that glues a chain of sentences to create what is called
discourse or text. It refers to the connection of all parts or elements of a text.
Without it, a text would be just a chaotic and even meaningless collection of
sentences. In other words, cohesion refers to the linguistic elements that make a
discourse semantically coherent; or as Nguyen Hoa (2000) indicated “cohesion
refers to the formal relationship that causes texts to cohere and stick together”.

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Therefore, it is necessary to examine how ideas cohere together so that the content
cohesion may be obtained and all can create a coherent and cohesive discourse. So
in the next part the question “What is meant by cohesion and coherence?” will be
discussed.
As stated in the previous section, cohesion refers to the way in which textual
units interact in a discourse. Halliday and Hasan (1976) classify cohesion into five

(not always distinct) classes: Conjunction is the only class which explicitly shows
the relationship between two sentences,
‘I have a cat and his name is Felix’.
Reference and lexical cohesion, on the other hand, indicate sentence
relationships in terms of two semantically equivalent or related words. In the case of
reference, pronouns are the most likely means of conveying referential meaning.
For example, consider the following sentences: ‘“Get inside now!” shouted the
teacher. When nobody moved, he was furious’. In order for the reader to understand
that ‘the teacher’ is being referred to by the pronoun ‘he’ in the second sentence,
they must refer back to the first sentence.
Lexical cohesion arises from the selection of vocabulary items and the
semantic relationships between them. For example, ‘I parked outside the library,
and then went inside the building to return my books’, where cohesion is
represented by the semantic relationships between the lexical items ‘library’,
‘building’ and ‘books’.
Substitution and Ellipsis are grammatical relationships, as opposed to
relationships based on word meaning or semantic connection. In the case of nominal
substitution, a noun phrase such as ‘a vanilla icecream cone’ can be replace by the
indefinite article ‘one’ as shown in the following example, ‘As soon as John was
given a vanilla ice-cream cone, Mary wanted one too’.
Ellipsis is closely related to substitution as it is often described as the special
case of ‘zero substitution’, where a phrase such as ‘in my exams’ is left out as it is
implied by the preceding sentence which contains the phrase ‘in your exams’. For
example,

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‘Did you get a first in your exams? No, I only got a third’.
For automatic identification of these relationships, lexical cohesion is the

easiest to resolve since less implicit information is needed to discover these types of
relationship between words in a text. In the sample sentence used to define lexical
cohesion we identified a generalization relationship between ‘library’ and ‘building’
and a has-part relationship between ‘library’ and ‘books’. However, there are five
further lexical cohesive relationships that are explored in the following section.
Lexical Cohesion is the cohesion that arises from semantic relationships
between words’ (Morris, Hirst, 1991). Halliday and Hasan (1976) define five types
of lexical cohesive ties that commonly occur in text. Here are a number of examples
taken from a collection of CNN news story transcripts, since the news story domain
is the focus of our analysis in this thesis: Repetition (or Reiteration) – Occurs when
a word form is repeated again in a later section of the text. ‘In Gaza, though,
whether the Middle East's old violent cycles continue or not, nothing will ever look
quite the same once Yasir Arafat come to town. We expect him here in the Gaza
Strip in about an hour and a half, crossing over from Egypt’.
Repetition through synonymy – Occurs when words share the same meaning,
but have two unique syntactical forms. ‘Four years ago, it passed a domestic
violence act allowing police, not just the victims, to press charges if they believe a
domestic beating took place. In the past, officers were frustrated, because they'd
arrive on the scene of a domestic fight, there'd be a clearly battered victim and yet,
frequently, there'd be no one to file charges.’
Word association through specialisation/generalisation – Occurs when a
specialised/generalised form of an earlier word is used. ‘They've put a possible
murder weapon in O.J. Simpson's hands; that's something that no one knew before.
And it shows that he bought that knife more than a month or two ahead of time and
you might, therefore, start the theory of premeditation and deliberation.’
Word association through part-whole/whole-part relationships – Occurs
when a part-whole/whole-part relationship exists between two words, e.g.
‘committee’ is made up of smaller parts called ‘members’. ‘The Senate Finance

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