CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTION

1.1 BACKGROUND
Cohesion is generally described with to two broad categories grammatical
cohesion and lexical cohesion. These categories reflect a view on language that
treats grammar and lexis a long separate lines. Language teaching textbooks on
cohesion often follow this division. In contrast, a 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 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.
Cohesion concerns how words in a text are related. The major work on
cohesion in English was conducted by Halliday and Hasan (1976). An instance of
cohesion between a pair of elements is referred to as a tie. Ties can be anaphoric
or cataphoric, and located at both the sentential and supra-sentential level.
Halliday and Hasan classified cohesion under two types: grammatical and lexical.
Grammatical cohesion is expressed through the grammatical relations in text such
as ellipsis and conjunction. Lexical cohesion is expressed through the vocabulary
used in text and the semantic relations between those words. Identifying semantic
relations in a text can be a useful indicator of its conceptual structure. Lexical
cohesion is divided into three classes: general noun, reiteration and collocation.
General noun's cohesive function is both grammatical and lexical, although
Halliday and Hasan's analysis showed that this class plays a minor cohesive role.
Consequently, it was not further considered. Reiteration is subdivided into four
cohesive effects: word repetition (e.g. ascent and ascent), synonym (e.g. ascent
and climb) which includes near-synonym and hyponym, superordinate (e.g. ascent
and task) and general word (e.g. ascent and thing). The effect of general word is
difficult to automatically identify because no common referent exists between the
general word and the word to which it refers. A collocation is a predisposed
combination of words, typically pairwise words, that tend to regularly co-occur
(e.g. orange and peel). All semantic relations not classified under the class of
reiteration are attributed to the class of collocation.

1.2FORMULATION OF THE PROBLEM

1. What is lexical cohesion?
2. What’s the lexical cohesion devices?
3. What’s the relation between part of the text through lexical cohesion
devices?

4
1.3PURPOSE
1. To know what’s the meaning of lexical cohesion.
2. To identify the lexical cohesion devices.
3. To identify the relation between part of the text through lexical cohesion
devices.

5
 CHAPTER II
CONTANT OF THE PAPER

2.1 LEXICAL COHESION

The term ‘cohesion’ is used to refer to the property of connectedness that
characterises a text in contrast to a mere sequence of words. Sometimes
‘cohesion’ is contrasted with ‘coherence’, where the former focuses on features on
the textual surface and the latter describes underlying meaning relationships
which can, but need not, be reflected by features on the surface text (see for
instance de Beaugrande& Dressler 1981).
Cohesion should play an important role in English language teaching
(ELT), as readers and writers need to be aware of the links that hold chunks of
text together and that contribute to the creation of a text as a unit of meaning.
Cohesion can contribute to the readability of a text and have an impact on the
comprehensibility and clarity of the argument. Additionally, the way in which
links between textual chunks are signalled reflects genre-specific properties of
texts. Thus, an appropriate use of cohesive devices is essential for language
learners to develop a native-like competence of text production and reception.
However, the teaching of cohesion does not seem to be a straightforward
issue. When Cook (1989:127) complains that cohesion does not receive enough
attention in traditional language teaching, he observes that “[c]ohesion between
sentences is too easily seen as an aspect of language use to be developed after the
ability to handle grammar and words within sentences”. Such an approach to
cohesion can result from viewing words as fairly independent linguistic units and
syntactic rules as the main principles that guide the combination of words into
sequences. When the grammar and the vocabulary of a language are thus
separated it is easy to talk about ‘grammatical’ and ‘lexical’ cohesion, a division
that is not uncommon in language teaching textbooks. It is clear that issues that
we encounter in pedagogic approaches to cohesion are not merely a consequence
of the requirements of the classroom, they also reflect general linguistic beliefs.
The present article argues in favour of a corpus theoretical approach to cohesion,
which views cohesion as a fundamentally lexical phenomenon and suggestions
will be made for the application of this approach in ELT. The article starts with a
look at different types of cohesion (Section 2). Section 3 summarises the main
difficulties of dealing with cohesion in the context of ELT. Section 4 looks at
communicative approaches in ELT and how they link in with corpus linguistic
ideas. Section 5 introduces a corpus theoretical approach to cohesion and Section
6 presents some textual examples. Section 7 then looks at implications of the
corpus theoretical approach for ELT and Section 8 concludes the article.

6
2.2 LEXICAL COHESION DEVICES
To automatically detect lexical cohesion ties between pairwise words,
three linguistic features were considered: word repetition, collocation and relation
weights. The first two methods represent lexical cohesion relations. Word
repetition is a component of the lexical cohesion class of reiteration, and
collocation is a lexical cohesion class in its entirety. The remaining types of
lexical cohesion considered, include synonym and superordinate (the cohesive
effect of general word was not included). These types can be identified using
relation weights (Jobbins and Evett, 1998).
Lexical cohesion comes about through the selection of items that are
related in some way to those that have gone before (Halliday, 1985: 310). Types
of lexical cohesion are repetition, synonymy and collocation. Furthermore,
Halliday and Hasan (1976: 288) divide types of lexical cohesion into reiteration
(repetition, synonymy or near-synonym, superordinate and general word) and
collocation.

2.2.1 Reiteration
Reiteration is a form of lexical cohesion which involves the repetition of
lexical item, at one end of the scale.
1. Repetition.
Word repetition ties in lexical cohesion are identified by same word
matches and matches on inflections derived from the same stem. An
inflected word was reduced to its stem by lookup in a lexicon (Keenan and
Evett, 1989) comprising inflection and stem word pair records (e.g. "orange
oranges").

2. Synonym or Near – synonym

Synonym is used to mean ‘sameness of meaning’ (Palmer, 1981: 88).
Lexical cohesion results from the choice of a lexical item that is in some
sense synonymous with a preceding one; for example sound with noise,
cavalary with horses in.

He was just wondering which road to take when he was started by a noise
from behind him. It was the noise of trotting horses . . . He dismounted and
led his horse as quickly as he could along the right-hand road. The sound of
the cavalarly grew rapidly nearer…(Halliday, 1985: 310).

3. Superordinate
Superordinate is term for words that refer to the upper class itself (Palmer,
1981: 85). In contrary, term for words that refer to the lower class itself is
hyponym. For example:

7
 Henry’s bought himself a new Jaguar. He practically lives in
the car (Halliday and Hasan, 1976: 278)

Here, car refers back to Jaguar; and the car is a superordinate of Jaguar.

4. General Word
The general words, which correspond to major classes of lexical items, are
very commonly used with cohesive force. They are on the borderline
between lexical items and substitutes. Not all general words are used
cohesively; in fact, only the nouns are when it has the same referent as
whatever it is presupposing, and when it is accompanied by a reference item
(Halliday and Hasan, 1976: 280-1).
For example:
There’s a boy climbing the old elm.
That old thing isn’t very safe (Halliday and Hasan, 1976: 280).
Here, the reiteration takes the form of a general word thing.

2.2.2 Collocation
Collocations were extracted from a seven million word sample of the
Longman English Language Corpus using the association ratio (Church and
Hanks, 1990) and outputted to a lexicon. Collocations were automatically located
in a text by looking up pairwise words in this lexicon. Collocation is lexical
cohesion which depends upon their tendency to co-occur in texts ( Firth, 1957 in
Lyons, 1977: 612).

Example :A little fat man of Bombay

Was smoking one very hot day.
But a bird called a snipe
Flew away with his pipe,
Which vexed the fat man of Bombay (Halliday, 1985: 312)

There is a strong collocational bond between smoke and pipe, which makes the

occurrence of pipe in line 4 cohesive.
Palmer assumes that collocation is very largely determined by meaning
and it is sometimes fairly idiosyncratic and cannot easily be predicated in terms of
the meaning of the associated words (1981: 76). To easier restriction of
collocation, he also divides three kinds of collocational restriction. First, some are
based wholly on the meaning or the item. Secondly, some are based on range.
Thirdly, some restrictions are collocational in the strictest sense (1981: 78).

8
2.2.3 Relation Weights
Relation weights quantify the amount of semantic relation between words
based on the lexical organisation of RT (Jobbins and Evett, 1995). A thesaurus is
a collection of synonym groups, indicating that synonym relations are captured,
and the hierarchical structure of RT implies that superordinate relations are also
captured. An alphabetically-ordered index of RT was generated, referred to as the
Thesaurus Lexicon (TLex). Relation weights for pairwise words are calculated
based on the satisfaction of one or more of four possible connections in TLex.

3.3 RELATION BETWEEN PART OF THE TEXT THROUGH LEXICAL

COHESION DEVICES
Just as isolated words are not sufficient for an effective communication, so
cannot a group of words meet the intended goal unless properly organized or
employed. The functions performed by language relate both to content and form,
as a piece of information may convey stylistic or emotional associations in
addition to the descriptive meaning. A number of scholars (Halliday, Hasan,
1985) have discussed the ways vocabulary can be used flexibly and appropriately
to avoid linguistic rigidity.
Lexical cohesion is considered as one of the most effective ways to meet the
above-mentioned expectations. Despite the diverse and numerous studies on
lexical cohesion, they all refer to one common consideration, the identification of
various linguistic devices to achieve text organization. Therefore, as “when
speaking about a topic, we need to refer to the same things again and again and if
using the same word each time would be inelegant”, (Schmitt, 2000:106) we
should then make use of a variety of tools to avoid it.
The model of lexical cohesion designed by Halliday and Hasan (1985)
consists of a number of lexical cohesive devices classified into two main
categories: reiteration and collocation. Their category of reiteration includes:
 Repetition of the same word (mushroom – mushroom) ƒ
 Synonym use (sword – brand) ƒ
 Superordinate (Jaguar – car) ƒ
 General word (We all kept quiet. That seemed the best move.)

According to Halliday and Hasan (1985), collocation is the cohesion achieved

through lexical units reoccurring regularly. Thus, the connection is obtained when
the lexical units have the tendency to occur in similar lexical contexts or when
they are lexically and semantically related. For example boy and girl are cohesive
because they have opposite meanings; laugh and joke, boat and row are also
cohesive in spite of not being systematically related but they are typically related
to each other.
On the other hand, McCarthy (1988) has designed a model with four lexical
relations:

9
1. equivalence
2. entailment 1: specific – general
3. entailment 2: general – specific
4. opposition

If we switch our attention to the tools for achieving cohesion in specific

pieces of
academic writing such as the paragraph or the essay, we need to consider a
number of linguistic devices.
One way to achieve this is “to repeat key nouns frequently in your paragraph”
(Oshima, Hague, 1999:41). Here is the example provided to illustrate the way key
nouns can be employed throughout the paragraph:
Gold, a precious metal, is prized for two important characteristics. First of all,
gold has a lustrous beauty that is resistant to corrosion. Therefore, it is suitable for
jewelry, coins and ornamental purposes. Gold never needs to be polished and will
remain beautiful forever. For example, a Macedonian coin remains as untarnished
today as the day it was minted twenty-three centuries ago. Another important
characteristic of gold is its usefulness to industry and science. For many years, it
has been used in hundreds of industrial applications. The most recent use of gold
is in astronauts’ suits. Astronauts wear gold-plated shields for protection outside
spaceships. In conclusion, gold is treasured not only for its beauty but also for its
utility.
The risk of overusing the key noun is avoided by the use of the relevant
pronouns referring to the key noun, called “pronoun references” by Zemach
(2005). For example, the pronoun it would be an appropriate substitute for the key
noun gold in the paragraph above.
A common way to make a piece of academic writing more cohesive is the use
of another linguistic device, namely the “transitions” (Zemach. Rumiseck,
2005:83), otherwise called “transition signals” (Oshima, Hague, 1999:43), or
simply linking words by many.
In addition to the above-mentioned cohesive devices, it must be pointed out
that word choice is of primary importance when it comes to producing both a
coherent and cohesive piece of writing. Commonly referred to as diction, it means
“finding and using the word that fits your meaning and tone exactly” (Macmillan
English, 1986:83). Moreover, such words “should be appropriate for the writer’s
purpose, audience, point of view, and tone” (Nadell, 1997:121). Scholars of
academic writing generally consider the following aspects of word choice:
 denotation vs. connotation (associated emotions or ideas), ƒ
 concrete vs. abstract words, ƒ
 general vs. specialized words, ƒ
 levels of formality (formal, informal, slang, etc.), ƒ
 words that suit the intended tone, etc.

10
 Nevertheless, insufficient attention has been paid to another useful linguistic
device, lexical synonymy, which could increase the lexical cohesion of a piece of
writing. Discouragement may have stemmed from such statements as “confusion
results from synonym use”, “Do not indulge in overuse of a synonym dictionary”,
“Synonyms always confuse or irritate readers” (Norris, 2014). While these
statements may be partly true with reference to the use of synonymy in certain
kinds of writing (technical writing for example) or misuse of synonymy by writers
whose knowledge of synonyms is inadequate, they do not undermine the
numerous expressive possibilities provided by the employment of the right
synonym in the right context.
It is also true that the linguistic phenomenon of synonymy sometimes tends to
be oversimplified by language users, i.e. they consider two or more synonyms as
words with the same meaning, interchangeable in any given context, thus
neglecting the really fine but essential shades of meaning, which, if not taken into
consideration, may spoil the overall stylistic picture of a piece of writing.
Selecting one synonym instead of another means taking into account at least one
of the following dimensions of synonym differentiation:
1. Denotation (what Lyons (1995) calls descriptive synonymy)
2. Style
3. Collocation
The simplistic use of such a complex linguistic device results in the use of
inappropriate synonyms in a piece of writing, thus producing a negative impact on
either the tone, accuracy or even intended message of the piece of writing.
Another factor bringing about the misuse of synonymy is misunderstanding
the role of thesauruses. Those lists of synonyms (in most cases near-synonyms, or
simply semantically related words) do not always imply interchangeability. They
remind us of words of a certain semantic resemblance, but it is then up to the
(professional) user to distinguish one from the other by using other books of
reference or test them in a variety of contexts. If this differentiation process is not
completed, we may end up using what I call “thesaurus synonymy”, i.e. using lists
of synonyms from thesauruses without taking into account the differences which
prevent them from being interchangeable. This is reinforced by Nadell (1997:123)
who claims that “even two words listed as synonyms in a dictionary or thesaurus
can differ in meaning in important ways”.
A lot of textbooks underline the risks of misusing synonymy. Bailey (2003)
states that “when writing it is necessary
to find synonyms in order to provide variety and interest for the reader”.
However, he gives the following warning to his book users:

“synonyms are not always exactly the same in meaning, but it is important not to
change the register. Firm is a good synonym for company but boss is too informal

11
to use for manager. Both pupil and student could be used to identify a 15-year-old
schoolgirl, but when she goes to university only student is normally used. Scholar
might be a possible synonym, but it is very formal. Similarly, at university a
lecturer could also be called a teacher, but in school the only possible synonym
for teacher is the old-fashioned master or mistress”.

Nevertheless, many claim that “knowledge of synonyms can help you

improve your writing vocabulary. Instead of repeating the same word over and
over, you can you use a synonym” (Macmillan English, 1986:554). The following
examples are provided as possible substitutes: ƒ
 respond - answer ƒ
 impede - obstruct ƒ
 reluctant - hesitant ƒ
 chains - shackles ƒ
 evident - obvious ƒ
 signify - mean ƒ
 admonition - reprimand ƒ
 remnant - remainder ƒ
 pertinent - relevant
These examples show that synonymy extends our lexical choice and provides
us with a myriad of opportunities to “avoid the repetition of words and add color
and variety to the language” (Colona, 2006:49).
It is obvious that lexical choice is greater when the language user is given the
possibility to choose between the members of the following pairs or sets of
synonyms: finish - end - terminate; alter - change; achieve - reach; concentrate -
focus; confine - limit; improve - ameliorate - get better; found - establish - set up;
trend - tendency; component - part; begin - start - initiate - commence.
The importance of using synonyms as tools for avoiding text “monotony” has
been highlighted by Tuttle (2009), who gives the example of the paragraph below
to show how the repetition of the same word within one paragraph should be
avoided.
Ralph, Tom’s dog, is very fast. He is so fast that I cannot keep up with him.
Ralph is so fast that he can catch a thrown ball before it hits the ground. He is a
fast runner; he almost catches cars.

“Synonyms can also serve the purpose of describing research results to

support thesis statements. For example, a number of related words can be used to
replace the verb said such as commented, stated, added, reported, emphasized,
stressed” (Colonna, 2006:108).
In addition to adding variety, synonyms can also perform a number of
semantic roles in a piece of writing.

12
 Two or more synonyms (or sometimes semantically related words) can be
employed to emphasize the degree or intensity of the quality/action being
described. A writer can therefore choose between the following pairs of
synonyms, with the second member being of a greater intensity or emphasis: dirty
– filthy; hot – boiling; cold – freezing; tired – exhausted; big - enormous; tasty –
delicious; small - tiny; old - ancient; happy - exhilarated, etc. Intensity can
sometimes increase progressively throughout the synonymic set, with the first
member of the synonymic set standing at the bottom of the intensity scale and the
last member of the synonymic set standing at the top of the intensity scale: to like,
to admire, to love, to adore, to worship. However, an accurate scale of synonymy
in such cases may prove difficult as the associations created by the different
members of the synonymic set may sometimes vary from person to person.
In many instances, differences in intensity can be combined with differences
in shades of meaning, especially in sets with a great number of synonyms such as
happy, pleased, thrilled, glad, contented, ecstatic, exultant, joyful or angry, mad,
furious, wrathful, indignant, enraged, exasperated.
Synonyms can be used to convey the right level of formality. When it comes
to academic writing, style is of paramount importance. This is the reason why a
number of tables with academic writing words have been designed to provide
writers with possible and appropriate words to be used in a piece of academic
writing. You will find below words extracted from such a table (Bailey, 2003:109-
110):
results – findings; area – field; authority – source; benefit – advantage;
category – type; component – part; behavior – conduct; output – production;
expansion – increase; option – possibility; trend – tendency; drawback –
disadvantage; assist – help; achieve – reach; concentrate – focus; show –
demonstrate; found – establish; predict – forecast; retain – keep; strengthen –
reinforce; eliminate – remove.
Schmitt (2000) discusses the role of language formality by referring to the
distinction of the English vocabulary between Old English and Greco-Latin
vocabulary, with the latter giving discourse a more formal or academic tone. Such
examples as brotherly – fraternal, kingly – regal, happiness – felicity, empty –
vacuous, demonstrate the difference along the formality scale between the
members of the synonymic pairs, with the second member of the pair showing a
greater level of formality.
Jackson (1988) offers the following list of synonyms, with the first member of
the pair of synonyms being more formal:

13
Table 1. Formal vs. neutral words

FORMAL NEUTRAL
Pulchritude beauty
decease die
missive letter
caveat warning
eulogy praise
occidental Western
traverse cross
renounce give up
Toxophilite archer
disputation argument
purchase buy

Accuracy of meaning can be achieved through the use of the appropriate word.
For example, attention must be paid to the discrimination of meaning between
such words as walk – stroll – stride - saunter ; see – gaze – stare – glimpse; laugh
– giggle – chuckle; Despite their considerable semantic overlap, the members of
these sets differ in certain semantic components, which are essential to the
accuracy of the expression. The need for accuracy is reinforced by C S Lewis’s
statement: “Don’t use words too big for the subject. Don’t say “infinitely” when
you mean “very”; otherwise you’ll have no word left when you want to talk about
something really infinite.”
Writers can better express their attitude by choosing the word which best suits
their intended effect (generally based on purpose and audience). The expression of
positive and negative attitudes can be facilitated by the employment of synonyms
(near-synonyms) of either positive or negative connotation. Such examples
include politician – statesman, skinny – slim; goof – error, etc.
Word choice also depends on the collocational possibilities of words. The
table below clearly shows the collocational differences between the words big,
large and great. In spite of their semantic overlap, these three words have their
typical collocates.

Table 2.Collocational restrictions of big, large and great (OALD, 2000:109)

Big large great

Man numbers success
House part majority
Car area interest
Boy room importance
Smile eyes problem
Problem family pleasure
Surprise volume beauty

14
 question population artist
difference problem surprise

The arguments presented above show that the writing process is closely linked
with lexical cohesion and word choice. The latter is of primary importance when
it comes to expressing the intended meaning in any piece of writing. However, in
academic writing, being the main focus of this study, special attention is paid to
the different dimensions of meaning. Lexical synonymy can be used by writers to
make a piece of writing both more cohesive and colorful. Synonyms can be
employed by writers to add variety to their piece of writing, thus avoiding
inappropriate repetition of the same word. Moreover, sets of synonyms give
writers the possibility to choose the word which best suits the tone and intended
audience. Accuracy can also be improved by using the word which fits the
context. Nevertheless, synonymy, while both interesting and useful, if not used
properly, may produce the opposite effect, that of distorting meaning or the tone
of writing. As a result, whenever we think of replacing a word with a synonym
(near-synonym), we should not just “pick” one from the myriad of words in a
thesaurus but test its appropriateness in the context you intend to use it. If the
search for an appropriate synonym is unsuccessful and the use of a similar word
would spoil accuracy, we had better take Crowley’s advice: “repetition is not
necessarily negative; if used with mastery, it is a figure of speech” (Crowley,
1994:202).

15
 CHAPTER III
CONCLUSION

3.1 CONCLUSION
Lexical cohesion comes about through the selection of items that are
related in some way to those that have gone before (Halliday, 1985: 310). Types
of lexical cohesion are repetition, synonymy and collocation. Furthermore,
Halliday and Hasan (1976: 288) divide types of lexical cohesion into reiteration
(repetition, synonymy or near-synonym, superordinate and general word),
collocation, and relation weights.
Lexical cohesion is considered as one of the most effective ways to meet the
above-mentioned expectations. Despite the diverse and numerous studies on
lexical cohesion, they all refer to one common consideration, the identification of
various linguistic devices to achieve text organization. Therefore, as “when
speaking about a topic, we need to refer to the same things again and again and if
using the same word each time would be inelegant”, (Schmitt, 2000:106) we
should then make use of a variety of tools to avoid it.

16
 BIBLIOGRAPHY

http://gosrok.blogspot.com/2012/03/lexical-cohesion-in-discourse-analysis.html?
m=1
International Journal of Corpus Linguistics 11:3 (2006), 363-383
Mediterranean Journal of Social Sciences Vol 5 No 14

17