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Huwebes, Marso 27, 2014

SYNOPSIS: Discourse and Style Part A


            Text refer to any passage, spoken or written, of whatever length, that does form a unified whole. In order to say that a text has a unified whole, cohesion is necessary. Cohesion is defined as a semantic one, which means the interpretation of some elements in the text is dependent on that of another. To further understand the importance of cohesion in a text, let us have a simple example:

            [1.1]Wash and core six cooking apples. Put them into a fireproof dish.

            The word “them” in the second sentence refers to the six cooking apples in the first sentence. We were able to understand the second sentence because of the information provided earlier in the text. In simple terms, cohesion involves context clues or the relation of each word to one another. This is also the reason why the text above has a texture since it has a unity with respect to its environment. Another point in the example above is the relation between them and six cooking apples, which shows how the text constitutes a tie or the single instance of cohesion.

            There are two major categories in which we can achieve cohesion. The first one is lexical cohesion. Under this category, cohesion can be achieved in the following manners: repetition of words, use of synonym or similar words, hyponymy or the sense of inclusion between and among the terms used, opposites and collocation or words that are associated with each other in a particular context.

            The second major category is grammatical cohesion which involves grammatical structures and signals within the sentence. The first way to achieve grammatical cohesion is through reference, it is the use of substitute words which refer to something else in the text for their significance. These include personal pronouns, demonstrative pronouns, determiners, adjectives and adverbs of comparison. Reference can be anaphora or cataphora. It is anaphora if it points to the preceding text and cataphora if it refers to the text that follows. The word them in example 1.1 is anaphora. The second way is through substitution, it is the replacement of one grammatical item by another. Words like one, ones, same, do and all its forms, so and not are used to fill in for noun phrase, verbal clause and clauses that report, express condition, or express modality. The third way is through ellipses or when something is left unsaid but understood. The fourth way is through conjunction. It involves connecting sentences through a particular semantic relationship between them by means of connectives that signal that relationships. Conjunction can be enumerative, explicative, illustrative, additive, contrastive, in logical consequence, transitional and summative.

            Thus, it is important to remember that within a text, the meaning of each sentence depends on its environment, including its cohesive relations with other sentences.

References: Dadufalza, C.D. (1992). Reading into Writing 1. Makati: Bookmark Inc. pp-205-233
                    Halliday, MAK (1976). Cohesion in English. photocopied material.pp. 1-30

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