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 Vocabulary

Grammatical Lexical

cohesion 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.