A comparative study of lexical cohesion in english and vietnamese newspaper articles

Vinh university

Department of foreign languages
=====  =====

A comparative study of lexical cohesion in
english and vietnamese newspaper articles
(so sánh liên kết từ vựng trong các bài báo tiếng anh và
tiếng việt)

Graduation thesis
Field: Linguistics

Supervisor:

Tran Ba Tien, M.A.

Student:

Tran Thi Thuy Quynh

Class:

47B - English

Vinh, May, 2010

Acknowledgement
For the completion of this study, I have been fortune to receive invaluable
contributions from many people.
First of all, I should like to express my deepest gratitude to my supervisor,

M.A. Tran Ba Tien who has instructed me in going into the subject and has given me
precious advice, valuable materials and enormously essential corrections with great
enthusiasm for the accomplishment of the thesis.

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Secondly, I have a deep thank to teachers in our Foreign Language Department
for their helpful suggestions and encouragement during the time my job has been
being carried out.
Thirdly, I am also grateful to librarians in the library of Vinh University who
lended me materials to do this study.
Finally, my profound thanks go to my loved family and my good friends
whose love, care and help have given me essential energy and determination. If I had
not had these helps, my work would not have been complete.

Vinh, May, 2010
Tran Thi Thuy Quynh

Abbreviations
etc:
e.g.
i.e.
vs.

et cetra
For example
That is to say
versus

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Table of content
Page
Acknowledgement
Abbreviations
Table of content

PART A
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.

i
ii
iii

INTRODUCTION

Rationale of the study
Aims of the study
Scope of the study
Methods of the study
Design of the study

PART B

1
2
2
3
3

DEVELOPMENT

CHAPTER I
THEORETICAL BACKGROUND
1.1
Theory of discourse
1.1.1
Concept of discourse
1.1.2
Discourse and text
1.1.3
Spoken discourse and Written discourse
1.1.4
Discourse context
1.1.4.1 Context of situation
1.1.4.2 Context versus co-text
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4
4
5
6
7
7

8


1.1.5
Cohesion
1.1.5.1 Concept of cohesion
1.1.5.2 Cohesion and coherence
1.1.5.3 Types of cohesive devices
1.1.6
Lexical cohesion
1.1.6.1 Concept of lexical cohesion
1.1.6.2 Types of lexical cohesion
1.1.6.2.1. Collocation

9
9
10
12
12
12
13
13

1.1.6.2.2

13

Reiteration
CHAPTER II LEXICAL COHESION IN ENGLISH AND VIETNAMESE
NEWSPAPER ARTICLES

2.1.
General structure of English and Vietnamese Newspaper Articles
2.2.
A brief Introduction to Data under analysis
2.3 .
Lexical cohesion in selected English Newspaper Articles
2.3.1.
Collocation
2.3.2. Reiteration
2.3.2.1. Repetition
2.3.2.2. Synonyms and Near Synonyms
2.3.2.3. Superordinate and General word
2.3.2.3.1. Superordinate
2.3.2.3.2. General words
2.4.
Lexical cohesion in selected Vietnamese Newspaper Articles
2.4.1.
Collocation
2.4.2.
Reiteration
2.4.2.1. Repetition
2.4.2.2. Synonyms and Near – synonyms
2.4.2.3. Superordinate and General word
2.4.2.3.1. Superordinate
2.4.2.3.2. General words
2.5.
Comparison of lexical cohesion in analyzed English and Vietnamese
Newspaper Articles
2.5.1.
Similarities

2.5.2.
Differences
CHAPTER III
DISCUSSION AND IMPLICATIONS
3.1.
Discussion

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15
16
16
16
18
18
21
22
25
26
29
29
30
30
33
35
35
36
38
38
40

42


3.2.
3.3.

Implications for teaching and learning lexical cohesion
Suggested exercises

PART C

43
43

CONCLUSION

1.

Recapitulation

50

2.

Suggestions for further studies

51

Reference
Appendix

Part a: Introduction
1. Rationale
1.1 Factors which attract readers to the text are coherence or logicality of the
text, so authors, writers or learners always pay attention to using language in creating
coherence of the text. In other words, they recognize coherence of the text. There are
two types of linguistic devices to make textual coherence: grammatical and lexical.
However, it seems that almost learners pay much attention to grammatical devices
(such as referent, ellipsis, substitution…) and very little to lexical ones despite the fact) and very little to lexical ones despite the fact
that the latter can contribute a significant part in creating coherence, as Nunan (1995:

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31) puts it : “lexical cohesion is the single most important form of cohesion,
accounting for something like forty percent of cohesion ties in text”. For cohesive
devices, lexical cohesion is considered more common to contribute to textual
coherence.
Different languages have different usage of language, thus the way of using
lexical cohesion is surely different, English and Vietnamese are not except for. We
would like to provide readers with a specific comparison between the usage of lexical
cohesion of 2 languages: English and Vietnamese in order that readers can apply in
their teaching and learning English.
1.2 Newspapers, in the civilized society, have become one of the most popular
and powerful means of communication and nowadays play a displaceable part in
man’s life. They are not only where people get themselves expressed, knowledgeenriched, information-updated and entertained, but also one of places where a
language can interestingly manifest its own existence with its certain feature. Besides,
we can know many characteristics of English or Vietnamese language in newspaper
articles published in English or Vietnamese, possibly in any forms of writing there.
We find lexical cohesion very interesting and appropriate also to apply related theories

into daily updated, newspaper article, the source of material that has never been used
for any discussions involving lexical cohesion in discourse so far.
For all reasons above, we have decided to choose “A comparative study of
lexical cohesion in English and Vietnamese newspaper articles” to be the theme of the
thesis.
2. Aims and objectives of the Study
- The aim of the thesis are to study similarities and differences between the
usage of Lexical Cohesion in English and in Vietnamese.
To get this aim, these following objectives fulfill:
- To give some statistics and descriptions of Lexical Cohesion used in a specific
form of writing in English and Vietnamese press: Newspaper article.
- To compare the amount of lexical cohesive items in English newspaper articles
and Vietnamese ones
- To suggest some practical applications of Lexical Cohesion in teaching and in
learning English.
3. Scope of the Study
Our research deals with types of Lexical cohesion in discourse provided by
Halliday and Hasan (1976) including Repetition, Synonym, Subordinates and General

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words. Other type of cohesive device: grammatical cohesion is out of the scope of this
thesis.
The data analyzed in the thesis are newspaper article available in English and
Vietnamese newspaper, for English newspapers: CNN, Nytimes, Washingtonpost,
USAtoday, Losangelestimes and for Vietnamese ones: Nhandan, Tuoitre, Dantri,
Vietnamnet. These are, in our opinion, the most well – known online newspapers.
English newspapers have become international newspaper on which English is the
major language to be chosen for the information display. Nhandan, Tuoitre, Dantri,

Vietnamnet are popular newspapers of Vietnam from which we just take foreign news.
Thus, Vietnamese people find it easy to know what are happening in the world,
outside their country. These are considered reliable sources. Content of these
newspaper articles is about every field of the life such as: science, disasters …) and very little to lexical ones despite the fact So, it is
not surprising that online newspapers are where the hottest news has been most
frequently and fastest updated to the public.
4. Methods of the Study
To meet the aims and objectives of the study, quantitative and approach was
employed. Survey is the research tool. The author investigates 10 English newspaper
articles and 10 Vietnamese newspapers ones which have the same content. Then the
writer synthesizes the data and gives comparison of the amount of lexical cohesion
used in English and in Vietnamese newspaper articles.
Once collected, the data were collectively analyzed to address the research
question. Tables were used for clearer presentation and comparison.
5. Design of the Study
There are three main parts in this research paper:
Part A: Introduction
In this part, the rationale, aims and objectives, scope, methods and design of
the thesis are introduced.
Part B: Development. This part consists of three chapters:
Chapter 1: Theoretical background
In this chapter, the author provides the literature review of the study, including
definition of key concepts, majorly concepts relating lexical cohesion and review of
related studies.
Chapter 2: Lexical cohesion in English and Vietnamese newspaper articles
This chapter presents step by step lexical cohesion used in 10 selected English
newspaper articles and 10 selected Vietnamese ones. Comparison of lexical cohesion
in English and Vietnamese newspaper articles was described in this chapter.

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Chapter 3: Discussion and implications
In this chapter, the author discuss what analyzed in chapter two and give some
implications for learning and teaching English as well as some suggested exercises.
Part C: Conclusion. In this part, principal findings are summarized and some
suggestions for further researches are provided.

Part B: development
Chapter 1: theoretical back ground
1.1. Theory of discourse
1.1.1. Concept of discourse
Linguistic descriptions are organized within a framework of categories.
Halliday (1961: 247) suggests that there are 4 such fundamental categories: “unit,
structure, class, system.” These 4 categories are universal: they are necessary and
sufficient as a basic for the description of any language. In terms of “unit”. The units
of grammar which enter into the description of English and any “related” language
are: sentence – clause – phrase – word – morpheme. Here they are arranged on a
scale from the largest to smallest. Therefore, traditional linguists until the first half of
the 20th century, considered sentences are the largest complete units to be studied.
That point of view was a mistake because many problems concerning with both
linguistic theories and practices appeared, they are unthoroughly solved with this
viewpoint. That is the reason why there is appearance of a new subject in 1960s and
early 1970s, studying languages through units above sentence level: Discourse
Analysis. Discourse Analysis “is concerned with the study of the relationship between
language and the contexts in which it is used” as Michael McCarthy (1991: 3) puts it.
It includes linguistics, semiotics, psychology, anthropology and sociology. Discourse
Analysts study language in use: written texts of all kinds and spoken data from
conversation to highly institutional forms of talk.
Since the time Discourse Analysis was a branch of linguistics, many authors

defined the term “Discourse” in different ways. In Introducing Discourse Analysis
(1995), David Nunan introduced the idea of Crystal (1992: 25) that “A discourse is a
continuous stretch of (especially spoken) language that maybe longer than one
sentence.” Barbara Johnstone (2002: 2) claims that : “Discourse usually means actual
instances of communication in the medium of language”. According to Nunan (1993),
a discourse is “a stretch of language consisting of several sentences perceived as
being related in some ways, in terms of the ideas they share and in terms of the jobs
they perform within discourse”.
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In this thesis, the notion that seems to be the most acceptable is the one
purposed by Guy Cook (1995: 198) seeing discourse as “stretches of language
perceived to be meaningful, unified and purposive.”
1.1.2. Text and Discourse
Two terms “Text” and “Discourse” seem to be difficult to distinguish, even
sometimes they are considered synonyms. To some linguists, the two can be
interchangeably used, as Nunan (1995: 1) indicates “a text or a discourse is a stretch
of language that may be longer than a sentence”. Or according to Crystal (1992: 72)
“A text may be spoken or written, prose or verse, dialogue or monologue. It may be
anything from a single proverb to a whole play, from a momentary cry for help to all
day discussion in a committee.”
However, other authors have a clear distinction between them. Widdowson is
probably one of the first who makes a very explicit distinction. According to
Widdowson (1984): “text typically has cohesion whereas discourse has coherence.”
For example:
A: Could you open the door?
B: It is so cold.
We don’t see any links between A and B but the listener can understand B
don’t want to open the door. That is coherence in discourse.

Some linguists are also similar to Widdowson’s viewpoint that is: “Discourse is
language in action (or interaction) while a text is the written record of that
interaction.” As Brown and Yule (1983: 6) indicates “text as a technical term to refer
to the verbal record of a communicative act” and Crystal (1992: 25) defines
“discourse as a continuous stretch of (especially spoken) language larger than a
sentence, often constituting a coherent unit such as a sermon, argument, joke or
narrative” and text as “a piece of naturally occurring spoken, written or signed
discourse identified for purpose of analysis. It is often a language unit with a
definable function, such as a conversation, poster”.
This thesis supports the distinction indicated by Salkie (1993): “The term “text”
is best used to refer to any written record of a communicative event whereas the term
“discourse” refers to interpretation of the communicative event in context ”. Any
complete piece of newspaper article taken for analyzing in this study is best seen as a
text or a discourse unit.
1.1.3. Spoken discourse and written discourse

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Spoken and written discourses simply mean speech and writing. It has been
widely agreed by linguists that there are common features as well as different ones
between these two forms of language.
According to Halliday (1985), writing emerged in society as a result of cultural
changes which created new communicative needs that could not be readily met by the
spoken language.
Approvingly, Raphael Salkie (1993) contributes that the contexts for using
written language are very different from those in which spoken language used. For
example, in the case of information, written language is used to communicate
with others who are removed in time and space, or for those occasions of which a
permanent or semi-permanent required.

One, accordingly, can not deny that spoken discourse is often considered to be
less planned and orderly, more open to intervention by the receivers while written
discourse is much better structured and the possibilities for subordinate participants
limited. Brown and Yule (1983) claim that “spoken and written discourse serve
various functions, the former is used for establishment and maintenance of human
relationships (interactional use) and the later for working out of transference of
information (transactional use)” (cited in To Viet Thu 2001 – MA thesis).
On the other hand, some linguists see common points between these two forms
of language. David Nunan (1995) believes that they both perform an equivalent range
of broad functions, i.e. They both are employed to get things the done, to provide
information and to entertain.
Michael McCarthy (1991: 150) additionally proposes, “both spoken and
written discourses are dependent on their immediate contexts to a greater or lesser
degree”, and “implicitness and explicitness (of the language being used) will depend
on what is being communicated to whom, rather than merely on whether the
discourse is spoken or written.”
In short, despite the fact that written and spoken discourses are two different
forms of language, they both carry out many functions of communication and the
differences are not absolute, and the characteristics that we tend to associate with
written language can sometimes occur in spoken language and vice versa. This means
that some spoken texts will be more like written texts than others and vice versa.
1.1.4 . Discourse context
1.1.4.1. Context of situation
David Nunan (1995:7) suggests a concept and a classification of context of
situation (or context in short) as follows:

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Context refers to the situation giving rise to the discourse, and within which the

discourse is embedded. There are two different types of context. The first of these is
the linguistic context – the language that surrounds or accompanies the piece of
discourse under analysis. The second is non-linguistic or experiential context within
which the discourse takes place. Non-linguistic contexts include: the type of
communicative event (for example, joke, story, lecture, greeting, conversation); the
topic; the purpose of the event, the setting including location, time of day, season of
year and physical aspects of the situation (for example, size of room, arrangement of
furniture); the participants and the relationships between them; and the background
knowledge and assumptions underlying the communicative event.

This viewpoint of Nunan is much similar to that of Halliday and Hasan (1976)
who claim that when responding to a spoken or a written passage (discourse or text),
the receiver employs not only linguistic clues, but also situation ones. Linguistically,
he responds to specific features which bind the passage together, the pattern of
connection, independence of structure, that we are referring to as cohesion,
situationally, he takes into account all he knows of the environment: what is going on,
what part of language is playing, and who are involved.
And the importance of context toward discourse interpretation is apparently
undeniable, as Cook (1989: 10) asserts: “There are good arguments for limiting the
field of study to make it manageable, but it is also true to say that the answer to the
question of what gives discourse its unity may be impossible to give without
considering the world at large: the context”.
For all the fact above, both linguistic and nonlinguistic contexts are taken into
account in this study. It is because lexical cohesion concerned with linguistic factors
but how that use is carried out also greatly depends on non-linguistic features of
discourse.
1.1.4.2. Context versus Co-text
It is necessary to tell these two terms from one another. David Nunan (1995)
holds that co-text is considered the linguistic element and context the non-linguistic
one. More specifically, Brown and Yule (1983) claim that “any sentence other than

the first in a fragment of discourse will have the whole of its interpretation forcibly
constrained by the proceeding text” and “the words occurring in discourse are
constrained by their co-text” (quoted in Dang Huu Phuoc 2006 – graduation Thesis)
In his Pragmatic (1996), Yule gives another concept that considers co-text as
linguistic material, accompanying the referring expression. The role of co-text is
illustrated with the example as follows:
France wins World Cup.
The referring expression “France” occurring initially in the utterance may
evoke a range of references (as the nation, the government, the army, the people …) and very little to lexical ones despite the fact of
France). Part of the co-text (‘wins world Cup’, here) clearly limits the range of
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possible interpretations one might have for a word like “France” and, in this case, he
might as well have quite little difficulty in perceiving it as French national football
team.
In short, both context and co-text are important in discourse interpretation but
they clearly differ from one another. Context is concerned with non-linguistic
(external) elements whereas co-text with linguistic (internal) ones.

1.1.5.
Cohesion
1.1.5.1. The concept of cohesion
Cohesion is easy to recognize but the way of seeing it is not absolutely similar
among researchers. Cohesion is very necessary in teaching and learning language.
The concept of cohesion is tightly related to discourse. Halliday and Hasan
(1976: 4) in their long study of cohesion in English define cohesion as “a semantic
one: it refers to the relation of meaning that exist within the text and that differs it
from what is not a text”.
A text is often constituted by a group of sentences but it is not the case that any

set of sentences can compose a text. To be a text, such a set must consist of related
elements. In other words, according to Halliday and Hasan, the primary determinant
of whether a set of sentences do or do not constitute a text depends on cohesive
relationship between the sentences which create texture. The texture is provided by
cohesive relationships. Halliday and Hasan (1976: 4) also suggest: “cohesion occurs
where the interpretation of some element in the discourse is dependent on that of
another. The one presupposes the other, in the sense that it can not be effectively
decoded except by recourse to it”. Cohesion thereby can be called formal links
between elements (within or beyond sentence – boundaries) that make a text
cohesive. It seems that Halliday and Hasan’s idea has similarity with Diep Quang
Bans. Ban in Ngữ Pháp Tiếng Việt (2005) states that cohesion is in the links between
two semantic elements which lies in two sentences or in two clauses of sentence.
Therefore, they explain to each other. In other words, cohesion is the semantic relation
in which to understand the specific meaning of this element, we must base on the
meaning of the other.
Halliday and Hasan (1976) make a detailed classification of the cohesive
devices in English. These authors as well as Ban (2005) distinguish between
grammatical and lexical cohesion. According to them, grammatical cohesion is

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divided into 4 different devices: Reference, substitution, ellipsis and conjunction and
lexical cohesion consists of repetition, synonym, superordinate, hyponymy, metonymy
and antonym…) and very little to lexical ones despite the fact
This explanation can be best accounted for by the following example:
Lan is the best student in my class. She won the first prize in the competition.
We see that “she” in the second sentence refers back to “Lan” in the first
sentence. If readers only look at the second sentence, they can not understand the
author wants to refer to whom but owning to the first sentence, the readers can know

she to be “Lan”. This anaphoric function of “she” gives cohesion to the two sentences
which constitutes a text.
Cohesion is much involved but not coincided with another notion known as
coherence.
1.1.5.2 Cohesion and Coherence
It is necessary to firstly confirm that cohesion is of great significance to
coherence but not coherence itself. Nunan (1993: 116) clearly indicates the difference
between cohesion and coherence: “Coherence is the extent to which discourse is
perceived to hang together rather than a set of unrelated sentences or utterances and
cohesion is formal links showing the relationships among clauses and among
sentences in discourse”. Or “Cohesion is a guide to coherence and coherence is
something created by the reader in the act of reading the text. Coherence is the
feeling that a text hangs together, that it makes sense and is not just a jumble of
sentences” (quoted in Nguyen Thi Van Lam and Ngo Dinh Phuong, 2007: 21)
Hoey points out the differences between cohesion and coherence as follows:
“cohesion is the objective capable in principle automatic recognition, while
coherence is subjective and judgments concerning it may vary from reader to reader”.
(quoted in Baker, 1992: 218)
Coherence, obviously is concerned with the feeling that the text hangs together
or the type of rhetorical relationship that underlines text. Coherence is something
invisible and attributed to the creation of the readers’ mind, very often with the
assistance of cohesion whereas cohesion occurs visibly in discourse but only serves as
signals, guides or clues to coherence. Coherence often depends on the common shared
background knowledge, implication or inference.
Cohesion is seen as one of the ways of creating coherence but it is a mistake to
identify it with coherence and to assume that there is one – to – one correspondence
between them. Coherence sometimes can be realized without any recourse to
cohesion.

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Let us have a look at the following examples:
(1) She passed the exam. That is surprising.
(2) A: Pat likes spicy food very much.
B: He is from Thailand.
(3) A: Would you like to go to the zoo tomorrow, Minh?
B: I must come to visit my grandparents.
In the first example, we see that the text has coherence because there is
cohesive device between the first sentence and the second sentence: “She passed the
exam = That”, “That” plays anaphoric function of “she passed the exam”. But in the
second sentence, despite of existence of anaphoric function (“He” refers to “Pat”) as a
cohesive device, one could hardly say that the two clauses are coherent if he does not
know the stereotype ethnic association between being Thailand and loving spicy food.
Conversely, without having a formal link, the conversation in the third example can
still be perceived to hang and make sense together in reader’s or hearer’s mind with
the assistance of his schemata (back ground knowledge) that mind will not go to the
zoo tomorrow because she must come to visit her grandparents.
We can summarize the distinction between cohesion and coherence through the
following table:

Cohesion

Coherence

- Is in the text
- Grammatical or lexical relationship
- Clues, signal or guide to coherence

- Is in the readers’ or listeners’ mind

- The feeling that the text makes sense
- The reader has to create coherence.

In short, cohesion and coherence are two major issues in theories of Discourse
Analysis. Cohesion, manifested by cohesive devices, plays a greatly important part in
creating coherence but does not guarantee coherence, which is best seen as the feeling
that the discourse hang together and that it makes sense.
1.1.5.3. Types of cohesive devices
In this thesis, we adopt the division of cohesive devices by Halliday and Hasan
(1976) which can be illustrated by the graph as follows:

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Reference
Substitution
Ellipsis
Conjunction

Grammatical cohesion

Cohesion

Collocation

Lexical cohesion

Reiteration

Repetition

Synonyms or
near synonyms
Superordinates
General words

1.1.6 . Lexical cohesion
1.1.6.1. Concept of lexical cohesion
Linguists have introduced similar definitions of lexical cohesion. For instance,
Halliday and Hasan (1976: 318) hold that lexical cohesion is established through the
structure of the lexis or vocabulary. Raphael Salkie (1993: 28) similarly states:
“lexical cohesion occurs when two words in a text are semantically related in some
way – in other words, they are related in terms of their meaning ”.
Hence, lexical cohesion can most generally be seen as the textual cohesion
existing between linguistic elements in discourse thanks to the exploitation of
semantic relations of lexis.
1.1.6.2. Types of lexical cohesion
As seen from the graph in 1.1.5.3, lexical cohesion holds two main types:
collocation and reiteration.
1.1.6.2.1. Collocation
Collocation pertains to lexical items that are likely to be found together within
the same text. Collocation occurs when a pair of words is not necessarily dependent
upon the same semantic relationship but rather they tend to occur within the same
lexical environment (Halliday and Hasan, 1976: 286).
Collocation is concerned with the tendency of linguistic items to co-occur in
the same lexical environment without depending on any semantic relations.
Collocation may generate a cohesive force by pairs of words like: laugh …) and very little to lexical ones despite the fact joke,

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garden…) and very little to lexical ones despite the fact dig, ill…) and very little to lexical ones despite the fact doctor, try…) and very little to lexical ones despite the fact succeed, bee…) and very little to lexical ones despite the fact honey, door…) and very little to lexical ones despite the fact window, boat…) and very little to lexical ones despite the fact row,
sunshine…) and very little to lexical ones despite the fact cloud…) and very little to lexical ones despite the fact or by long cohesive chains like: hair…) and very little to lexical ones despite the fact comb …) and very little to lexical ones despite the fact curl …) and very little to lexical ones despite the fact wave,
poetry…) and very little to lexical ones despite the fact literature…) and very little to lexical ones despite the fact reader…) and very little to lexical ones despite the fact writer…) and very little to lexical ones despite the fact style, sky... sunshine…) and very little to lexical ones despite the fact cloud…) and very little to lexical ones despite the fact rain waving
in and out of successive sentences. The closer lexical items are to each other between
sentences, the stronger the cohesive effect.
1.1.6.2.2. Reiteration
Reiteration, contrary to collocation, is characterized by condition that there
must be some explicit semantic relation between cohesive linguistic items. Halliday
and Hasan (1976: 319) introduce a definition of reiteration which states: “Reiteration
is the repetition of a lexical item, or the occurrence of a synonym of some kind, in the
context of reference; that is, where the two occurrences have the same reference”.
Later on, McCarthy (1991: 65) likewise hold that “Reiteration means either restating
an item in a later part of the discourse by direct repetition or else reasserting its
meaning by exploiting lexical relations”.
In brief, reiteration is a type of formal cohesive device in which the two
cohesive items refer to the same entity or event, and is considered a major
characteristic that makes discourse coherent.
So far, linguists have widely adopted the classification of reiteration by
Halliday and Hasan (1976) according to which reiteration embraces four main types:
Repetition, Synonyms/ Near synonyms, superordinates, and General words.
Repetition is a type of reiteration in which the writer repeats exactly a lexical
item previously appearing in the text.
Synonymy including synonyms and near-synonyms is the cohesive device in
which two or more words have the same meaning.
Superordinates and general words means, of any pair of lexical terms belonging
to these types of reiteration, the meaning of one (superordinate/general word) is
included in that of the other (Hyponym).
They illustrated these four types with the examples below:
a. The boy is going to fall if he does not take care.
b. The lad is going to fall if he does not take care.

c. The child is going to fall if he does not take care.
d. The idiot is going to fall if he does not take care.
In (a), ‘boy’ is directly restated in the second sentence and this is called
repetition, the reiteration in (b) takes the form of a synonym ‘lad’, of a superordinate
‘child’ in (c) and in (d) of a general word ‘idiot’.

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McCarthy (1991: 66) uses slightly different terms for the third and forth types.
He calls them immediate superordinate and general super-ordinate which are subkinds of super-ordinate simply.
In summary, this chapter has dealt with the theory related to lexical cohesion
mainly proposed by Halliday and Hasan. In brief, lexical cohesion includes two main
types: collocation and reiteration, of which reiteration has four sub-types: repetition,
synonyms/ near-synonyms, super-ordinates and general words. All of them will be
discussed in the progress of the study.

Chapter II: lexical cohesion in English and
Vietnamese newspaper articles
2.1.

General structure of news in English and Vietnamese newspaper

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We read newspaper articles to get information about what is happening in our
community and in the rest of the world. A newspaper article is arranged in 3 main
parts: title or headline, the introduction or the lead and the body. The title or the
headline mentions main content of an article, the title should be as catchy as possible

because the readers will read this first then decide if he or she will continue reading
the rest of the article. The introduction or the lead in which the general information is
given, the introduction tells readers what the article is going to be about (the topic),
what the article is going to say (the content). The body (the most important part) of a
newspaper article where full details and quotes from the people involved are added, is
the heart of the article where you provide pertinent information and details, or paint a
word picture. This is where the answers to the five WH questions (What, Where,
When, Who, Why) will be written. It is where criteria of accuracy, brevity and clarity
should be most rigorously applied. Let us have a look at a specific newspaper article as an
illustration:
Headline
Lead
Body

ISAF: 4 killed in U.S. aircraft crash in Afghanistan
(CNN) -- A U.S. aircraft crashed in southern Afghanistan, killing three U.S.
service members and one civilian employee, a statement from NATO-led forces
said Friday.
The cause of the crash of the Air Force CV-22 Osprey was not known, said the
International Security Assistance Force statement. Several other service members
were injured in the crash late Thursday night.
The CV-22, which conducts long-range infiltration and resupply operations for the
U.S. military, went down seven miles west of the city of Qalat, the capital of Zabul
province.
Zabiullah Mujahid, spokesman for the Taliban in the region, said Taliban fighters
shot down the aircraft. Another spokesman, Qari Yoseph, also claimed
responsibility and said that 30 Americans had been killed.
CNN, April 9,2010)

2.2.

A brief introduction to data under analysis
All the newspaper articles to be analyzed and synthesized in this thesis are
taken from the online English and Vietnamese newspapers. The former ones are:
CNN, Washingtonpost, Nytimes, Losangelestimes, USAtoday; the later ones are:
Nhandan, Tuoitre, Vietnamnet, Dantri.
A newspaper article is a complete topic. It mentions a specific content so it
involves in information relating to topic of the newspaper article. Some general
statistics of the selected materials are given in the table below:

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Words
Total
number
of pieces

20

Paragraph

Sentence

Total

Average
number of
Total
words per

piece

Average
number of
Total
paragraphs
per piece

Average
number of
sentences
per piece

7011

350.55

12.3

13.75

246

275

Table 1 – General statistics of materials selected
2.3. Lexical cohesion in English newspaper article
2.3.1. Collocation
It can be seen that collocation is phenomenon commonly used in newspaper
articles. Every paragraph contains this phenomenon. The information of newspaper

articles is about every fields in life, especially disaster in the world, so collocational
pairs or chains are about these following lexical relations: damage, number of people
affected, money, time. For example, these are collocational pairs or chains in each
paragraph found in piece 1, 2 and 8:
Piece 1:
- U.S aircraft…) and very little to lexical ones despite the fact crashed…) and very little to lexical ones despite the fact killing…) and very little to lexical ones despite the fact U.S. service members…) and very little to lexical ones despite the fact civilian employee.
- Cause…) and very little to lexical ones despite the fact crash…) and very little to lexical ones despite the fact known.
- Service member …) and very little to lexical ones despite the fact injured…) and very little to lexical ones despite the fact crash.
- Cv-22…) and very little to lexical ones despite the fact U.S . military…) and very little to lexical ones despite the fact went down.
- Fighters shot down…) and very little to lexical ones despite the fact aircraft.
- 30 American…) and very little to lexical ones despite the fact killed.
Piece 2:
- China.. lowed... flag…) and very little to lexical ones despite the fact pulled…) and very little to lexical ones despite the fact entertainment…) and very little to lexical ones despite the fact people…) and very little to lexical ones despite the fact killed…) and very little to lexical ones despite the fact earth quake.
- Residents…) and very little to lexical ones despite the fact observed.
- President…) and very little to lexical ones despite the fact tribute…) and very little to lexical ones despite the fact victim.
- Death toll…) and very little to lexical ones despite the fact risen…) and very little to lexical ones despite the fact quake.
- People…) and very little to lexical ones despite the fact missing…) and very little to lexical ones despite the fact injure.
- Disaster…) and very little to lexical ones despite the fact pray…) and very little to lexical ones despite the fact difficulties.
- U.S…) and very little to lexical ones despite the fact lowered…) and very little to lexical ones despite the fact flag…) and very little to lexical ones despite the fact ceremony.
- Embassy…) and very little to lexical ones despite the fact held…) and very little to lexical ones despite the fact charity…) and very little to lexical ones despite the fact collect…) and very little to lexical ones despite the fact items.
- Thousands who…) and very little to lexical ones despite the fact injured…) and very little to lexical ones despite the fact earth quake…) and very little to lexical ones despite the fact tens of thousands…) and very little to lexical ones despite the fact homeless.
- Government…) and very little to lexical ones despite the fact dollars…) and very little to lexical ones despite the fact quake.
- Expert…) and very little to lexical ones despite the fact visit…) and very little to lexical ones despite the fact affected…) and very little to lexical ones despite the fact effort.
- Report…) and very little to lexical ones despite the fact killed…) and very little to lexical ones despite the fact wounded…) and very little to lexical ones despite the fact quake.
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- Quake…) and very little to lexical ones despite the fact region…) and very little to lexical ones despite the fact rescuer…) and very little to lexical ones despite the fact working…) and very little to lexical ones despite the fact find…) and very little to lexical ones despite the fact survivors…) and very little to lexical ones despite the fact rubble.
- Population... million.
- People…) and very little to lexical ones despite the fact group.

- Evaluation…) and very little to lexical ones despite the fact meters…) and very little to lexical ones despite the fact sea level.
- GDP…) and very little to lexical ones despite the fact billion.
- Earth quake…) and very little to lexical ones despite the fact home…) and very little to lexical ones despite the fact flee.
- Earth quake-devastated zone…) and very little to lexical ones despite the fact inspect... damage.
- Suffering…) and very little to lexical ones despite the fact pain.
- Member…) and very little to lexical ones despite the fact lost…) and very little to lexical ones despite the fact grieve.
- Surveyed…) and very little to lexical ones despite the fact rubble…) and very little to lexical ones despite the fact resident.
- Allegation…) and very little to lexical ones despite the fact government…) and very little to lexical ones despite the fact denies…) and very little to lexical ones despite the fact help…) and very little to lexical ones despite the fact rescuer…) and very little to lexical ones despite the fact sickness.
- Slight hope…) and very little to lexical ones despite the fact give up…) and very little to lexical ones despite the fact unite…) and very little to lexical ones despite the fact do…) and very little to lexical ones despite the fact rescue work.
Piece 8:
- President…) and very little to lexical ones despite the fact killed…) and very little to lexical ones despite the fact plane…) and very little to lexical ones despite the fact traveling…) and very little to lexical ones despite the factwife…) and very little to lexical ones despite the fact crashed.
- People…) and very little to lexical ones despite the fact board…) and very little to lexical ones despite the fact killed.
- Plane…) and very little to lexical ones despite the fact airport…) and very little to lexical ones despite the fact hit…) and very little to lexical ones despite the fact runway.
- Fire…) and very little to lexical ones despite the fact extinguished…) and very little to lexical ones despite the fact damage…) and very little to lexical ones despite the fact anybody…) and very little to lexical ones despite the fact survived.
- Airplane…) and very little to lexical ones despite the fact charred…) and very little to lexical ones despite the fact strewn.
- Crash…) and very little to lexical ones despite the fact happened.
- Tupolev – 154…) and very little to lexical ones despite the fact carrying…) and very little to lexical ones despite the fact landing…) and very little to lexical ones despite the fact heavy fog.
- Chairman…) and very little to lexical ones despite the fact expresses…) and very little to lexical ones despite the fact condolences…) and very little to lexical ones despite the fact crash.
- Condolence…) and very little to lexical ones despite the fact people…) and very little to lexical ones despite the fact families…) and very little to lexical ones despite the fact killed…) and very little to lexical ones despite the fact tragic…) and very little to lexical ones despite the fact accident.

Although the meaning relation between words in these above chains is not easy
to classify, we still find a very marked cohesive effect resulting from the cooccurrence of lexical items that are in some way associated with each other. The
cohesive effect depends not so much on any systematic relationship as on their
tendency to share the same lexical environment, to occur in collocation with others.
For example, we have the lexical environment of number of people affected for the
chain “Thousands who… injured… earth quake… tens of thousands… homeless injured… injured… earth quake… tens of thousands… homeless earth quake… injured… earth quake… tens of thousands… homeless tens of thousands… injured… earth quake… tens of thousands… homeless homeless ” In
piece 2. Number of people affected in this chain is: thousand and tens of thousand.
2.3.2. Reiteration
2.3.2.1 Repetition
Repetition is a type of reiteration in which the writer repeats exactly a lexical

item previously appearing in the text.
In English newspaper articles, reiteration occurrence are 783 cases, of which
repetition is the most frequently employed (558 of 783 in whole, representing
71.26%). It is rather understandable for the fact that it is the most natural and easiest
way to reiterate a lexical item.

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