Abstract
Cohesion is generally described with regard to two broad categories: ‘grammatical cohesion’ and ‘lexical cohesion’. These categories reflect a view on language that treats grammar and lexis along separate lines. Language teaching textbooks on cohesion often follow this division. In contrast, a corpus theoretical approach to the description of English prioritises lexis and does not assume that lexical and grammatical phenomena can be clearly distinguished. Consequently, cohesion can be seen in a new light: cohesion is created by interlocking lexico-grammatical patterns and overlapping lexical items. A corpus theoretical approach to cohesion has important implications for English language teaching. The article looks at difficulties of teaching cohesion, shows links between communicative approaches to ELT and corpus linguistics, and suggests practical applications of corpus theoretical concepts.
Highlights
The term ‘cohesion’ is used to refer to the property of connectedness that characterises a text in contrast to a mere sequence of words
The semantic prosody adds further detail to a corpus theoretical approach to cohesion: lexical items in texts are made of cores that are surrounded by some realisation of a more or less fixed pattern
A corpus linguistic theory provides a framework for a description of the English language that does not need a strict separation of lexis and grammar
Summary
The term ‘cohesion’ is used to refer to the property of connectedness that characterises a text in contrast to a mere sequence of words. In addition to a section on lexical cohesion, McCarthy (1991) deals with issues such as discourse-organising words, which overlap with Winter’s (1977) vocabulary 3 and Francis’ (1986) anaphoric nouns. Words such as problem, fact, situation, etc. McCarthy (1991) illustrates, for instance, how vocabulary in text can be interpreted as a reflection of a problem-solution pattern Words such as concern, drawback, hamper, obstacle can indicate a ‘problem’. I could do no more here than give a brief overview, it should have become clear that cohesion is a complex phenomenon to describe and that we can find cross-relations to a variety of fields
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