Cohesion In English Research Articles

An In-Depth Analysis of Cohesion Utilization in the English Language: Implications for Effective Communication and Textual Coherence

This study focuses on the link between coherence and the English language notion of cohesiveness. Cohesion is defined as the way in which different elements of a text or speech are linked together to create a unified and integrated whole. The study identifies the challenges in determining the appropriate level of cohesion for a given text and how factors such as audience, purpose, and context can affect cohesion. The aims of the research are to provide learners with a better understanding of cohesion in English and to demonstrate the importance of cohesion in producing clear and effective communication. The paper is divided into three sections: the first section introduces the problem, aims, scope, procedure, and hypothesis; the second section provides a detailed explanation of the definition, general meaning, models, and types of cohesion; and the third section examines lexical and grammatical cohesion in more detail. The theory argues that English language learners typically don't understand the ideas of cohesion and coherence, which leads to poor writing that is illogical and grammatically incorrect. The research methodology involves data collection from English books, analysis, comparison of essays on cohesion, and consultation with instructors of English. Ultimately, this research highlights the importance of cohesion in achieving coherence and producing effective communication in English. The practical study of grammatical cohesion conducted in the English Department of Sawa University's College of Education aimed to assess students' comprehension of linguistic phenomena such as conjunction, ellipsis, references, and substitution. The study involved 54 participants, comprising of 36 females and 18 males, who were presented with 18 different prompts and asked to identify the linguistic phenomenon present in each response. The study's analysis revealed that participants identified these linguistic phenomena differently for each prompt, with some responses predominantly identified as conjunction, while others were predominantly identified as ellipsis or references. These findings provide insight into how individuals interpret and use language and can contribute to the development of linguistic theories and models.

Grammatical Cohesion in English and Arabic Business Texts: A Contrastive Discoursal Analysis

The current study centres around uncovering the functions and types of grammatical cohesion in structuring business texts in English and Arabic newspapers. Unequivocally, it aims to unravel the possible similarities and differences in the English and Arab journalistic registers in terms of grammatical cohesion. Moreover, the study is built on two hypotheses. First, there are differences in the frequencies of grammatical cohesive tools manipulated by English and Arabic writers. Unlike their Arabic counterparts, the English articles tend to involve more realizations of grammatical cohesive patterns. Second, both English and Arabic journalists exhibit a general tendency to take advantage of the same types of grammatical cohesion in their business articles. Ten articles have been selected from The Guardian and Ashareq Al-Awsat newspaper websites as data for analysis. Five articles have been picked from each newspaper. Halliday and Hasan’s (1976) model of grammatical cohesion has been applied to the selected articles in both languages. The results show that reference and conjunction exist profoundly in the two newspapers. On the contrary, substitution and ellipsis have almost disappeared in both corpora.

Cohesion in Ali Douagi’s sleepless nights and Shirley Jackson’s the lottery: A comparative study

Since the publication of Halliday and Hasan’s book Cohesion in English (1976), a few studies have been done on cohesion in short stories (Sari, 2016; Abed, 2016; Khaingo, 2016). However, to the best of our knowledge, not one has examined cohesion in Ali Douagi’s Sleepless Nights (1969) and Shirley Jackson’s The Lottery (1948). This paper tries to fill this gap by examining and comparing the use of grammatical cohesion and lexical cohesion in these two short stories. Using a qualitative and descriptive approach, this study identifies the grammatical and lexical cohesive devices utilized in the two short stories. The results show that both short stories utilize grammatical cohesion and lexical cohesion to build a text that “hangs together” as a consistent whole. However, a few differences between the two short stories can be observed: whereas Sleepless Nights uses the four types of grammatical cohesion (ellipsis, conjunction, reference and substitution), The Lottery is found to utilize ellipsis, conjunction and reference only. Also, a slight difference related to lexical cohesion can be observed: in The Lottery, text parts are found to be lexically tied through repetition, near-synonymy, hyponymy and antonymy. Sleepless Nights, however, utilizes hyponymy, repetition, synonymy, and antonymy. The results confirm the claim that cohesion is an integral element for any type of discourse, including short stories.

Lexical Cohesion Used In Donald Trump’s Campaign Speech

The title of this research is "Lexical Cohesion Used in Donald Trump's Campaign Speeches". Lexical cohesion is one of the most important tools for bringing text together. Lexical cohesion is grouped into five types. Due to the large number of types, research on lexical cohesion needs to be carried out and the problems to be studied are: the types and uses of the most common types found in Donald Trump's campaign speeches. The theory used is the theory of lexical cohesion types taken from Cohesion in English by Halliday and Hassan (1976). This study uses four of Donald Trump's speeches as data sources. Data collection is carried out in the form of library research, which searches for and downloads data sources and then reads the relevant data included in it. All data is grouped into the appropriate type group. The data that has been collected is analyzed descriptively and frequency. The results of the study show that five types of lexical cohesion are found in Donald Trump's campaign speeches. The five types of lexical cohesion found are repetition, synonym, superordinate, general words, and collocation. The mostly type of lexical cohesion found is repetition.

THE ANALYSIS OF VERBAL ELLIPSIS FOUND IN THE STORY BOOK OF “THE BOYHOOD OF RONGGOWARSITO”

This research entitled The Analysis of Verbal Ellipsis Found in The Story Book of “The Boyhood of Ronggowarsitoaimed at analyzing and classifying the classification of verbal ellipsis’s types in each text of story book entitled The Boyhood of Ronggowarsito. The primary data was taken from the English textbook ofThe Boyhood of Ronggowarsito(1991).The main theory used in this study was taken from the book entitled Cohesion in English(1975) by M.A.K Halliday and Ruqaiya Hasan. They stated that ellipsis is the omission of an item of a sentence on the assumption which an earlier sentence will make the meaning clear. They classify ellipsis into three types: nominal ellipsis, verbal ellipsis and clausal ellipsis. However, the focus of the research was only on the analysis of verbal ellipsis. The research method used in the research is qualitative research. The required data were classified and analyzed based on the classification of verbal ellipsis. Verbal ellipsis consisted of lexical verbal ellipsis and operator verbal ellipsis. The findings showed that verbal ellipsis consisted of lexical verbal ellipsis and operator verbal ellipsis, where lexical verbal ellipsis is marked by the omission of final element meanwhile, operator verbal ellipsis is marked by the omission of initial element.

Cohesion: A Fundamental Element in Writing English Texts

This paper is devoted for discussing cohesion as a main element in writing English texts with now and then reference to coherence since the two terms are closely interrelated components. Therefore, the researchers try to distinguish between cohesion and coherence by stating the differences between them. Cohesion means the way or the process of connecting two sentences together, whereas coherence, on the other hand, indicates the clarity of meaning and balance of a piece of writing or a text. This research focuses on the nature of grammatical cohesion in English by demonstrating its chief function. A real attempt is made to identify the types and divisions of cohesion.

Reiteration Used by the Participants of Warmadewa University Reading News Contest

This paper discusses about reiteration used by the participants of reading news contest conducted in Warmadewa University. Reiteration is part of lexical cohesion. The lexical cohesion has two functions; first to link between word and word, phrase and phrase within a text and second to indicate co-occurrence of words in which their meaning related in the same environment. The reiteration refers to first function of lexical cohesion. The theories applied to support this paper are the theory of cohesion from a book entitled Introducing Discourse Analysis by Nunan (1993) and a book entitled Cohesion in English by Halliday and Hasan (1976). The data of this paper taken from six texts made by the participants of the contest. The text contains with the participants’ perspectives on Indonesian culture in the globalization era. The data was analyzed by using qualitative method. Based on the result of the analysis, it is found that reiteration used in the text by the participants of reading news contest consists of repetition, synonym/nears synonym, superordinate and general word.

Cohesive Devices in Literary texts: Analysis of Stephen King’s The Mist for Students of Foreign Languages, Linguistics and Translation

Text analysis constitutes one of the most challenging and complex practices for every student. Owing to this fact, linguists need a theoretical framework that would explain every linguistic device in text cohesion. Those cohesive devices may identify those units that are part of the analysed text. Among the huge amount of literary works that might be analysed, we chose one by Stephen King, one of the most prolific thriller writers of the 20th century. The aim of this study is to analyse one of his bestsellers in American Literature, The Mist, a psychological horror novella published in 1980. The main work used in this research is Hasan and Halliday’s Cohesion in English, which will be the centre of the linguistic study. Thanks to this investigation, we shall establish certain linguistic parameters to help students build a linguistic analysis to ease their academic and professional areas, such as linguistics and translation. The excerpt analysed will include certain linguistic cohesive devices, such as anaphora-cataphora, the use of direct speech, relative clauses, or Hasan and Halliday’s terms of field, tenor, and mode, among others. As a result of this, EFL students from different disciplines, such as foreign languages, translation, or linguistic studies, will therefore increase their knowledge of this literary model in order to be applied to other literary and non-literary works.

NOMINAL ELLIPSIS IN THE STORY OF “THE BOYHOOD OF RONGGOWARSITO”

This study entitled Nominal Ellipsis in the Story of “The Boyhood of Ronggowarsito” aimed at analyzing and classifying the classification of the kinds of nominal ellipsis in English textbooks particularly in each text. The primary data was taken from the English textbooks: The Boyhood of Ronggowarsito (1991).The main theory used in this study was taken from a book entitled Cohesion in English (1975) by M.A.K Halliday and Ruqaiya Hasan. They stated that ellipsis is the omission of an item of a sentence on the assumption which an earlier sentence will make the meaning clear. They classify ellipsis into three types: nominal ellipsis, verbal ellipsis and clausal ellipsis. The required data were classified and analyzed based on the classification of nominal ellipsis. Nominal ellipsis consisted of the elements of deictic, numerative, epithet, classifier and qualifier and also the head. Nominal ellipsis consisted of modal element and propositional element. The findings showed that the type of nominal ellipsis must be the common noun and not proper noun or pronoun expressing the thing. The common noun created the functions of the element of deictic, numerative, epithet and classifier and these elements can function as head under certain circumstances.

The Analysis of Cohesive Devices Found in Good-Bye

The basic definition of discourse is a language above sentences which is a cohesive, coherent, and functional. Cohesion and coherence are two vital elements constituting a discourse which are supported by the cohesive devices, i.e. reference, substitution, ellipsis, conjunctions, and lexical cohesion. This article discusses the cohesion and coherence of discourse through the identification of its cohesive devices. An anecdote entitled Good-Bye is selected due to its simplicity yet intriguing language, therefore the subliminal messages can be delivered and revealed. By using the qualitative approach and method, the results of the analysis, covering the cohesive devices within the text, can be comprehensively described. The analysis was carried based on the theory of functional grammar by MAK Halliday from his book Halliday's Introduction to Functional Grammar by MAK Halliday (revised by Christian MIM Matthiessen), about the cohesive devices. In addition to this one, the theory of cohesive devices from the book Cohesion in English by MAK Halliday and Ruqaiyah Hasan is used as a supporting theory. Within this anecdote, four out of five cohesive devices proposed by Halliday and Hasan were found. They covered the reference, ellipsis, conjunction, and lexical cohesion (reiteration and collocation). Unfortunately, substitution could not be found.

Moroccan Students’ Writing Difficulties

This study aims at investigating and identifying cohesion and coherence problems that Moroccan 2nd-year baccalaureate students encounter in written discourse. An overall number of thirty students from two fields of study (Math Sciences and Economics) participated in the study, producing a total number of thirty essays. Students’ application of cohesion and coherence were studied and analyzed based on Halliday and Hasan’s Cohesion in English (1976) and Oshima and Hogue’s (2006) criteria for achieving coherence. Regarding the analysis of the corpus, it was discovered that students tend to use more reference ties, followed by lexical ties and conjunctions. Substitution and ellipsis linkers were scarcely used. Besides, the results clarify that Math Sciences Students outweigh their Economics counterparts in using and dealing with cohesion devices. As for coherence, the findings show slight differences between the two groups of upper high school students in adhering to coherence techniques. Finally, the study reveals that students lack important training in using and varying cohesion and coherence linkers.

THE EXPLORATION OF COHESIVE DEVICES IN SYNOPSIS WRITINGS PRODUCED BY ENGLISH STUDY PROGRAM STUDENTS OF UNIVERSITAS GADJAH MADA

Cohesive devices in a piece of writing serve to unify sentences within a text. Building upon Halliday and Hasan’s (1976) Cohesion in English, this study aimed to identify and classify cohesive devices and also to discover the effects of cohesion overuse and underuse found in synopsis writings written for Book Report 1 and Book Report 2 assignment. The data were collected from 40 synopsis writings produced by the 4th and 5th semester students of English Study Program of Universitas Gadjah Mada. The data analysis applied a qualitative method and the data collection used purposive sampling technique.
 The findings showed that reiteration was the most prominently used type and followed by reference, conjunction, and collocation with the frequency 2,193 (56.94%), 1,405 (36.48%), 64 (2.92%), and 252 (6.54%) times respectively. Other types with low occurrences were elliptical and substitutional cohesion that occurred 3 (0.078%) and 2 (0.051%) times respectively. In some cases, students tended to overuse and underuse cohesive devices. In terms of cohesion overuse, in some cases, the use of reiteration leading to lexical redundancy and monotonous sentences. And in cohesion underuse, the lack of using personal reference and temporal conjunction yielding ineffective and less cohesive sentences.
 Keywords: Cohesive Devices; Discourse Analysis; Synopsis Writings.

Cohesion and Coherence Studies: Development, Chaos and Application

Cohesion and coherence are the basic concepts and important subjects in discourse analysis. After the publication of Cohesion in English by Halliday and Hasan (1976), linguists paid close attention to cohesion, coherence and the relationship between the two concepts. They adapted and developed this theory from diversified perspectives. Since cohesion and coherence are also two critical elements of high-quality articles, a multiplicity of linguists and educators were committed to exploring the effect of cohesion and coherence on writing quality. In addition, some researchers tried to apply cohesion and coherence theory to English teaching so as to improve students’ writing quality. The past decades have witnessed the theoretical and empirical development of cohesion and coherence. This paper first makes a review of the theoretical development of cohesion and coherence, and the relationship between the two concepts. And the present paper also deals with chaos in previous cohesion and coherence studies combining the author’s beliefs. Then empirical studies of cohesion and coherence theory are introduced which are divided into two categories. The first group of empirical studies explores the relationship of cohesion, coherence and writing quality; The second group applies this theory to writing teaching. The article concludes with limitations and future directions of researches about the application of cohesion and coherence theory to writing teaching.

Lexical Cohesion: A Brief Review on Theoretical Emergence, Development and Practical Application in Discourse Studies

Lexical Cohesion: A Brief Review on Theoretical Emergence, Development and Practical Application in Discourse Studies Zubairu Malah Abstract Following the seminal publication of Halliday and Hasan’s Cohesion in English (1976), lexical cohesion became a major source of prolific inquiries among discourse analysts. Through the decades, this field of research has made tremendous advances in terms of newer frameworks and the data being explored. Lexical cohesion studies have applied different models to investigate different registers and genres (spoken and written) and reported findings which significantly advanced knowledge on the relation between lexical resources and different properties of discourse. Adopting the review method, this paper attempts to provide a brief account on lexical cohesion as an approach to discourse analysis. It endeavors to capture some appreciable impression of description, emergence, development and practical application of lexical cohesion in discourse studies. The paper is generally structured into four major sections as: (1) emergence and nature of cohesion in discourse analysis, (2) scholarly rhetoric and debate on cohesion and textuality in discourse, (3) approaches to lexical cohesion analysis, and (4) insights from lexical cohesion studies. Therefore, this study reviews the theory of (lexical) cohesion and its significance as a field of researching discourse. It is hoped that the study would be of help to students and researchers interested in applying lexical cohesion to analyze discourse. Full Text: PDF DOI: 10.15640/ijlc.v8n2a6

COHESION IN ENGLISH

COHESION IN ENGLISH

A Contrastive Study of Hard Times and the Two Versions from the Perspective of Textual Cohesion

Cohesion is the semantic concept of discourse. And the key to coherence of discourse is to use various cohesive devices rationally. Due to the different ways of thinking between China and the West, English and Chinese have great difficulties in textual cohesion. In order to better carry out translation practice, it is necessary to understand the cohesive devices of the text. Both English and Chinese use cohesive devices, but they are different. The complicated work of English-Chinese translation is the treatment of cohesive devices and the quality of the translation depends on the proper handling of the cohesive devices. This paper is based on a book cohesion in English by Halliday and Hasan in 1976, whose research methods are comparative analysis and descriptions. Choosing the works hard times of Charles Dickens, a famous British critic of the 19th century as well as Foreign Language Teaching and Research Press Mu Run and China Books Publishing House Wu Sujun two versions as the research object. By analyzing the differences between English and Chinese texts, the author tries to find out the reasons for the differences and hopes to provide some help for English-Chinese translation.

Analisis Kohesi Wacana Naratif “Mendongeng Lima Menit” pada Tabloid Tokoh

This study entitled “Analisis Kohesi Wacana Naratif ‘Mendongeng Lima Menit’ pada Tabloid Tokoh”. The aims of this study are (1) to identify the lexical cohesive device, (2) to identify the grammatical cohesive device, and (3) to identify the cohesiveness degree of a narrative discourse in “Mendongeng Lima Menit” on Tokoh tabloids. The method used in collecting the data in this study is observation method, and then the data were analyzed with descriptive qualitative method, quantitative method, and distributional method. The method used in presenting the data analysis are formal and informal methods. The source of data in this study is taken from the narrative discourse of “Mendongeng Lima Menit” in Tokoh tabloids, which consists of 27 fairytale stories. This study used the theory of cohesion by Halliday & R. Hassan in their book Cohesion in English (1976:4). This study found types of lexical cohesion, grammatical cohesion, and the cohesiveness degree in the narrative discourse “Mendongeng Lima Menit” on the tabloids of Tokoh. The lexical cohesion found were synonym, antonym, repetition, colocation, and equivalency. The grammatical cohesion found were reference, substitution, ellipsis, and conjunction. The cohesiveness degree of the narrative discourse “Mendongeng Lima Menit’ was high, which was 92,7% and they were built by 930 cohesive devices. The grammatical cohesion included the 210 references (22,6%), 44 substitutions (4,7%), 12 ellipsis (1,3%), and 528 conjunctions (56,8%). The lexical cohesion included 6 synonyms (0,64%), 31 antonyms (3,3%), 57 repetitions (6,1%), 36 colocations (3,9%), and 6 equivalencies (0,64%).

The Effect of Strategic Planning Training on Cohesion in EFL Learners’ Essays

This study aims to examine the effect of strategic planning training on cohesion in English as a foreign language (EFL) learners’ writing. We recruited 62 Chinese learners of English and divided them evenly into experimental and control groups. We trained the experimental group in 4 sessions to master strategic planning. Then we selected 4 participants from the experimental group to undergo semistructured interviews to track change in their attentional focus throughout the training. We measured cohesion in essays before and after training using Coh-Metrix and analyzed it using the least significant difference in analysis of variance. The findings showed that strategic planning training had a limited effect on cohesion in EFL writing, which could be explained by EFL learners’ improved awareness of cohesion and limited English proficiency. This study suggests that (a) EFL learners should improve their linguistic proficiency to channel their attentional focus on cohesion and (b) writing instruction should help these learners to balance their focus.

Lexical Cohesion and Semantic Relation in the English Texts

This study is entitled Lexical Cohesion and Semantic Relation in the English texts. The aims of this study are identifying the types of lexical cohesion and analyzing the semantic relation found in the texts. The data were taken from five texts with different genres. It contains aspects of life and consists of twelve pages. This study was library research which applied the documentation method to collect the data. The data of this study were analyzed using the qualitative method. The theory applied in this study is cohesion in English that explains the types of cohesion into two; lexical cohesion and grammatical cohesion and analyzing the semantic relation found in the text. The result of the analysis shows a lot of lexical cohesions found in the data such as reiteration. Reiteration consists of repetition, synonym and superordinate. Collocation can be explained by means of; Antonym, the same ordered series, and certain lexical sets. Semantic relation between lexical items in the text that makes the text cohesive was also found in this study.

Referential Cohesion in Donald Trump`s Speech Transcript

Cohesion establishes the text or sentences and gives their meaning by the grammatical and lexical linking. Halliday and Hasan (1976) In Cohesion in English, identify five general categories of cohesive devices that are possibly implemented in texts: reference, ellipsis, substitution, lexical cohesion and conjunction. One of the cohesion meanings is reference. Reference is one of cohesive devices, and it contains the specific nature of the information needed to be retrieved for the comprehensive information. The problems discussed in this study are the type of reference applied in the speech transcripts and referential meaning presented in the speech transcripts of Donald Trump`s Speech. The aims of the study were to find out the reference applied in the speech transcripts and referential meaning of the reference presented in the speech transcripts. The main theory used was Theory of Cohesion proposed by Halliday and Hasan (1976). The data in this study were taken from the website of Washington Post in form of transcripts. The data were collected using observation method and analyzed using qualitative method. There were two kinds of reference found in the speech; which were personal reference and demonstrative reference. The personal reference that occurred in the speech transcript included I, you, we, he, she, they, and it. Meanwhile, the demonstrative references that appeared in the speech transcript were this, these, there, here, now and the. These references were presented as endophoric, whether anaphoric or cataphoric. The comparative reference was absent. From this study, it can be concluded that referential cohesion takes an important role in a text or in this case speech transcripts, since the function of reference is to hold a text together and give its meaning.