Cohesion in English

M.A.K. Halliday, Ruqaiya Hasan

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781317869597
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• Subtopic: Linguistics
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

Cohesion in English is concerned with a relatively neglected part of the linguistic system: its resources for text construction, the range of meanings that are speciffically associated with relating what is being spoken or written to its semantic environment. A principal component of these resources is 'cohesion'. This book studies the cohesion that arises from semantic relations between sentences. Reference from one to the other, repetition of word meanings, the conjunctive force of but, so, then and the like are considered. Further, it describes a method for analysing and coding sentences, which is applied to specimen texts.

Chapter 1

Introduction

1.1 The concept of cohesion

1.1.1 Text

If a speaker of English hears or reads a passage of the language which is more than one sentence in length, he can normally decide without difficulty whether it forms a unified whole or is just a collection of unrelated sentences. This book is about what makes the difference between the two.

The word TEXT is used in linguistics to refer to any passage, spoken or written, of whatever length, that does form a unified whole. We know, as a general rule, whether any specimen of our own language constitutes a TEXT or not. This does not mean there can never be any uncertainty. The distinction between a text and a collection of unrelated sentences is in the last resort a matter of degree, and there may always be instances about which we are uncertain – a point that is probably familiar to most teachers from reading their students’ compositions. But this does not invalidate the general observation that we are sensitive to the distinction between what is text and what is not.

This suggests that there are objective factors involved – there must be certain features which are characteristic of texts and not found otherwise; and so there are. We shall attempt to identify these, in order to establish what are the properties of texts in English, and what it is that distinguishes a text from a disconnected sequence of sentences. As always in linguistic description, we shall be discussing things that the native speaker of the language ‘knows’ already – but without knowing that he knows them.

A text may be spoken or written, prose or verse, dialogue or monologue. It may be anything from a single proverb to a whole play, from a momentary cry for help to an all-day discussion on a committee.

A text is a unit of language in use. It is not a grammatical unit, like a clause or a sentence; and it is not defined by its size. A text is sometimes envisaged to be some kind of super-sentence, a grammatical unit that is larger than a sentence but is related to a sentence in the same way that a sentence is related to a clause, a clause to a group and so on: by CONSTITUENCY, the composition of larger units out of smaller ones. But this is misleading. A text is not something that is like a sentence, only bigger; it is something that differs from a sentence in kind.

A text is best regarded as a SEMANTIC unit: a unit not of form but of meaning. Thus it is related to a clause or sentence not by size but by REALIZATION, the coding of one symbolic system in another. A text does not CONSIST OF sentences; it is REALIZED BY, or encoded in, sentences. If we understand it in this way, we shall not expect to find the same kind of STRUCTURAL integration among the parts of a text as we find among the parts of a sentence or clause. The unity of a text is a unity of a different kind.

1.1.2 Texture

The concept of TEXTURE is entirely appropriate to express the property of ‘being a text’. A text has texture, and this is what distinguishes it from something that is not a text. It derives this texture from the fact that it functions as a unity with respect to its environment.

What we are investigating in this book are the resources that English has for creating texture. If a passage of English containing more than one sentence is perceived as a text, there will be certain linguistic features present in that passage which can be identified as contributing to its total unity and giving it texture.

Let us start with a simple and trivial example. Suppose we find the following instructions in the cookery book:

[1:1]

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

It is clear that them in the second sentence refers back to (is ANAPHORIC to) the six cooking apples in the first sentence. This ANAPHORIC function of them gives cohesion to the two sentences, so that we interpret them as a whole; the two sentences together constitute a text. Or rather, they form part of the same text; there may be more of it to follow.

The texture is provided by the cohesive RELATION that exists between them and six cooking apples. It is important to make this point, because we shall be constantly focusing attention on the items, such as them, which typically refer back to something that has gone before; but the cohesion is effected not by the presence of the referring item alone but by the presence of both the referring item and the item that it refers to. In other words, it is not enough that there should be a presupposition; the presupposition must also be satisfied. This accounts for the humorous effect produced by the radio comedian who began his act with the sentence

[1:2]

So we pushed him under the other one.

This sentence is loaded with presuppositions, located in the words so, him, other and one, and, since it was the opening sentence, none of them could be resolved.

What is the MEANING of the cohesive relation between them and six cooking apples? The meaning is that they refer to the same thing. The two items are identical in reference, or COREFERENTIAL. The cohesive agency in this instance, that which provides the texture, is the coreferentiality of them and six cooking apples. The signal, or the expression, of this coreferentiality is the presence of the potentially anaphoric item them in the second sentence together with a potential target item six cooking apples in the first.

Identity of reference is not the only meaning relation that contributes to texture; there are others besides. Nor is the use of a pronoun the only way of expressing identity of reference. We could have had:

[1:3]

Wash and core six cooking apples. Put the apples into a fireproof dish.

Here the item functioning cohesively is the apples, which works by repetition of the word apples accompanied by the as an anaphoric signal. One of the functions of the definite article is to signal identity of reference with something that has gone before. (Since this has sometimes been said to be its only function, we should perhaps point out that it has others as well, which are not cohesive at all; for example none of the instances in (a) or (b) has an anaphoric sense:

[1:4]	a.	None but the brave deserve the fair.
	b.	The pain in my head cannot stifle the pain in my heart.

For the meaning of the, see 2.4.2 below.)

1.1.3 Ties

We need a term to refer to a single instance of cohesion, a term for one occurrence of a pair of cohesively related items. This we shall call a TIE. The relation between them and six cooking apples in example [1:1] constitutes a tie.

We can characterize any segment of a text in terms of the number and kinds of ties which it displays. In [1:1] there is just one tie, of the particular kind which we shall be calling REFERENCE (Chapter 2). In [1:3], there are actually two ties, of which one is of the ‘reference’ kind, and consists in the anaphoric relation of the to six cooking apples, while the other is of a different kind and consists in the REPETITION of the word apples, a repetition which would still have a cohesive effect even if the two were not referring to the same apples. This latter type of cohesion is discussed in Chapter 6.

The concept of a tie makes it possible to analyse a text in terms of its cohesive properties, and give a systematic account of its patterns of texture. Some specimen analyses are given in Chapter 8. Various types of question can be investigated in this way, for example concerning the difference between speech and writing, the relationship between cohesion and the organization of written texts into sentences and paragraphs, and the possible differences among different genres and different authors in the numbers and kinds of tie they typically employ.

The different kinds of cohesive tie provide the main chapter divisions of the book. They are: reference, substitution, ellipsis, conjunction, and lexical cohesion. A preliminary definition of these categories is given later in the Introduction (1.2.4); each of these concepts is then discussed more fully in the chapter in question.

1.1.4 Cohesion

The concept of cohesion is a semantic one; it refers to relations of meaning that exist within the text, and that define it as a text.

Cohesion occurs where the INTERPRETATION of some element in the discourse is dependent on that of another. The one PRESUPPOSES the other, in the sense that it cannot be effectively decoded except by recourse to it. When this happens, a relation of cohesion is set up, and the two elements, the presupposing and the presupposed, are thereby at least potentially integrated into a text.

This is another way of approaching the notion of a tie. To return to example [1:1], the word them presupposes for its interpretation something other than itself. This requirement is met by the six cooking apples in the preceding sentence. The presupposition, and the fact that it is resolved, provide cohesion between the two sentences, and in so doing create text.

As another example, consider the old piece of schoolboy humour:

[1:5]	Time flies.
	– You can’t; they fly too quickly.

The first sentence gives no indication of not being a complete text; in fact it usually is, and the humour lies in the misinterpretation that is required if the presupposition from the second sentence is to be satisfied. Here, incidentally, the cohesion is expressed in no less than three ties: the elliptical form you can’t (Chapter 4), the reference item they (Chapter 2) and the lexical repetition fly (Chapter 6).

Cohesion is part of the system of a language. The potential for cohesion lies in the systematic resources of reference, ellipsis and so on that are built into the language itself. The actualization of cohesion in any given instance, however, depends not merely on the selection of some option from within these resources, but also on the presence of some other element which resolves the presupposition that this sets up. It is obvious that the selection of the word apples has no cohesive force by itself; a cohesive relation is set up only if the same word, or a word related to it such as fruit (see Chapter 6), has occurred previously. It is less obvious, but equally true, that the word them has no cohesive force either unless there is some explicit referent for it within reach. In both instances, the cohesion lies in the relation that is set up between the two.

Like other semantic relations, cohesion is expressed through the stratal organization of language. Language can be explain...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half-Title Page
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Foreword
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• Table of Contents
• 1 Introduction
• 2 Reference
• 3 Substitution
• 4 Ellipsis
• 5 Conjunction
• 6 Lexical cohesion
• 7 The meaning of cohesion
• 8 The analysis of cohesion
• Bibliography
• Index