Functional Grammar

Cohesion
Week 8

- Geoff Thompson, Introducing Functional

Grammar, Hodder Education, London, 2004
(Chapter 7)

Organizing the Message: The Textual

Metafunction Cohesion
The speaker attempts, more or less consciously,
more or less expertly, and more or less
successfully, to help the hearer to perceive the
coherence of the text by organizing the way in
which the meanings are expressed.
Resources:
1) Theme choice
2) Cohesion

TEXTURE
The quality of being recognizably a text rather
than a collection of unconnected words and
clauses.
Cohesion: sentences must be linked to each other
to make up a unified whole (linguistically).

Coherence: the text must have a continuity of

sense (conceptually)
The two are linked.

- Coherence and cohesion contribute towards

creating textuality: the property of a text which
distinguishes it from a random sequence of
unconnected sentences
- The translator needs to be familiar with ways of
organising the content clearly (coherence) and
connecting ideas and information across
sentences to develop a topic (cohesion).

One of the main cohesive resources is repetition.

Wash and core six cooking apples. Put
them into the fireproof dish.
The texture of this passage is provided by the
cohesive relation that exists between them and
six cooking apples
They refer to the same thing. The two items are
identical in reference: they are COREFERENTIAL

Wash and core six cooking apples.

Put the apples into the fireproof dish.
Here the item functioning cohesively is the apples,
which works by repetition of the word apples
accompanied by the.
One of the functions of the definite article is to
signal identity of reference with something that has
been said before.

The relation between six cooking apples and them,

as well as the relation between six cooking apples
and the apples, constitutes a tie.

The concept of tie makes it possible to analyse a

text in terms of its cohesive properties, and gives
a systematic account of its patterns of texture.

COHESIVE TIES

Reference
Substitution
Ellipsis
Conjunction

Lexical cohesion

COHESION
Cohesion refers to relations of meaning that exist within
the text
Cohesion occurs when the interpretation of some
element in the text is dependent on that of another
One element presupposes another element, in the sense
that it cannot be effectively decoded except by
recourse to it
Cohesion lies in the relation that is set up between the
presupposing and the presupposed elements

Cohesion

Grammar
Grammatical
cohesion

Vocabulary
Lexical
cohesion

REFERENCE
There are certain items in every language which have
the property of reference: instead of being
interpreted semantically, they make reference to
something else for their interpretation.
Reference is a set of grammatical resources that
allow the speaker to indicate whether something is
being repeated from somewhere earlier in the text
[], or whether it has not yet appeared in the text.

E.g.
They came into the bedroom. A large bed had been
left in it. (Mr and Mrs Smith looked around and saw
)
Anaphoric reference (pointing backwards)
Cataphoric reference (pointing forwards)

1) Whos he? [speaker pointing at photograph]

2) She appealed to Philip. He turned the main
tap.
Exophoric reference (pointing outwards) (I, me,
you)

Endophoric reference (pointing inwards)

(texture)

TYPES OF COHESIVE REFERENCE

1) (Third-person) personal pronouns
E.g.
Cholera first struck England in 1832. It came from
the East.

2) Demonstratives: this, that, these, those and

also here, there, now, then, the.
E.g.
- The British Council also arranges refresher courses for
teachers of English in the summer vacation. These
courses are often organized in conjunction with a
university.
- He merely laughed and said they she was imagining
things. This typical male reaction resulted in a raw.
- He later made the usual switch to the army. There he
had a brilliant career.
- They seem to have been idyllically happy. Then they had
their first quarrel.

The has a wider scope. It essentially means

something like you know which I mean, either
because I have already mentioned it, or because I
am about to explain which one, or because you
are familiar with it from your knowledge or
experience.
1) A child was watching TV in the sitting room.
The child was 8 and (second-mention use)
2) The arrest of Parnell, who was the president of
the National Irish League, was a shock.
3) Are you taking the car?

3) Comparative: more, another, different, the

same, similarly, ordinal numbers.
E.g.
- There are many other stories about their
staunch individuality.
- Otherwise his story is the same as Katharines
- If children worry so much about failure,
- The third type of cohesive anaphoric reference
is comparative.

Another Reason Why I Dont Keep a Gun In the House

The neighbors dog will not stop barking.
He is barking the same high, rhythmic bark.
They must switch him on on their way out.
The neighbors dog will not stop barking.
I close all the windows in the house
and put on a Beethoven symphony full blast
but I can still hear him muffled under the music,
barking, barking, barking
and now I can see him sitting in the orchestra,
his head raised confidently as if Beethoven
had included a part for barking dog.
When the record finally ends he is still barking,
His eyes fixed on the conductor who is
entreating him with his baton
while the other musicians listen in respectful
silence to the famous barking dog solo,
that endless coda that first established
Beethoven as an innovative genius.