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Discours Analysis2

The document discusses linguistic cohesion in discourse, highlighting five types identified by Halliday and Hasan: reference, substitution, ellipsis, conjunction, and lexical cohesion. It elaborates on referential cohesion, including anaphoric and cataphoric references, as well as personal, demonstrative, and comparative references. Additionally, it explains substitution and ellipsis, their types, and the role of conjunction and lexical cohesion in establishing relationships within a text.

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26 views4 pages

Discours Analysis2

The document discusses linguistic cohesion in discourse, highlighting five types identified by Halliday and Hasan: reference, substitution, ellipsis, conjunction, and lexical cohesion. It elaborates on referential cohesion, including anaphoric and cataphoric references, as well as personal, demonstrative, and comparative references. Additionally, it explains substitution and ellipsis, their types, and the role of conjunction and lexical cohesion in establishing relationships within a text.

Uploaded by

demnyabdelali4
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Professor Kesbi S6

2 Linguistic elements in discourse


2.1. Cohesion
In chapter 1, we saw that coherent texts — that is, sequences of sentences or utterances, which
seem to ‘hang together’ — contain what are called text-forming devices. These are words and
phrases which enable the writer or speaker to establish relationships across sentence or
utterance boundaries, and which help to tie the sentences in a text together. Halliday and
Hasan (1976) identified five different types of cohesion: reference, substitution, ellipsis,
conjunction and lexical cohesion. In Halliday (1985a) these have been further refined and
the five categories have been reduced to four, with substitution being seen as a sub-category
of ellipsis.

2.1.1 Referential cohesion


If a single sentence is taken out of context and presented in isolation, it is likely to contain
elements that are difficult, if not impossible, to interpret.

Anaphoric and cataphoric reference

There are two different ways in which reference items can function within a text. They can
function in an anaphoric way. Or they can function in a cataphoric way. Anaphoric
reference points the reader or listener ‘backwards’ to a previously mentioned entity, process
or state of affairs. For instance, Mary bought a new car. She loves the way it handles on the
road. Cataphoric reference points the reader or listener forward — it draws us further into
the text in order to identify the elements to which the reference items refer. Authors
sometimes use cataphoric reference for dramatic effect. For example, Despite being tired, he
continued walking. The old man reached the end of the trail.

Personal, demonstrative and comparative reference


Halliday and Hasan (1976) identify three sub-types of referential cohesion — personal,
demonstrative and comparative.

PERSONAL REFERENCE
Personal reference items are expressed through pronouns and determiners. They serve to
identify individuals and objects that are named at some other point in the text.
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Pronouns for Personal Reference: He is coming to the party tonight.

Determiners for Personal Reference: This is my laptop.

DEMONSTRATIVE REFERENCE
Demonstrative reference is expressed through determiners and adverbs.

Determiners for Demonstrative Reference: This book is interesting.

Adverbs for Demonstrative Reference: The restaurant over there is famous for its desserts.

COMPARATIVE REFERENCE

Comparative reference is expressed through adjectives and adverbs and serves to compare
items within a text in terms of identity or similarity.

Adjectives for Comparative Reference:

This car is faster than the one we had before.

Adverbs for Comparative Reference:

He speaks English more fluently than his brother.

2.1.2 Substitution and ellipsis


In their 1976 work on cohesion, Halliday and Hasan deal with substitution and ellipsis
separately, although they do point out that these two types of cohesion are essentially the
same. Ellipsis is described as a form of substitution in which the original item is replaced by
zero. In a later publication, Halliday (1985a) combines substitution and ellipsis into a single
category.

Substitution
There are three types of substitution — nominal, verbal and clausal.
Nominal Substitution:
Original Sentence: The cat is on the mat. The cat is sleeping.
Sentence with Nominal Substitution: The cat is on the mat. It is sleeping.
In this example, the noun phrase "the cat" is replaced with the pronoun "it" to avoid repetition.
Verbal Substitution:
Original Sentence: John can sing, and John can dance.
Sentence with Verbal Substitution: John can sing and dance.
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Clausal Substitution:
Original Sentence: The teacher explained the concept. The teacher gave examples.
Sentence with Clausal Substitution: The teacher explained the concept. She gave examples.
In this example, the entire clause "the teacher" is replaced with the pronoun "she" to avoid
redundancy.

Ellipsis
Ellipsis occurs when some essential structural element is omitted from a sentence or clause
and can only be recovered by referring to an element in the preceding text.

As with substitution, there are three types of ellipsis — nominal, verbal and clausal.
Original Sentence:
Sarah wanted a chocolate ice cream, and Tom wanted a vanilla ice cream.
Sentence with Ellipsis:
Sarah wanted a chocolate ice cream, and Tom wanted a vanilla one.
a) Nominal Ellipsis:
Original Sentence: I bought a new car, and my brother bought a used car.
Sentence with Nominal Ellipsis: I bought a new car, and my brother, a used one.
In this example, the noun phrase "car" is omitted after "used," and it's understood from the
context.
b) Verbal Ellipsis:
A: Have you been working?
Sentence with Verbal Ellipsis / B: Yes, I have (0).
c) Clausal Ellipsis:
Original Sentence: Tom likes to play the guitar, and Mary likes to play the piano.
Sentence with Clausal Ellipsis: Tom likes to play the guitar, and Mary, the piano.
In this example, the clause "likes to play" is omitted after "Mary," and the ellipsis implies that
Mary likes to play the piano.
Ellipsis is a common feature in language that allows for brevity and efficiency in
communication when the omitted elements can be inferred from the context.
2.1.3 Conjunction
Conjunction differs from reference, substitution and ellipsis in that it is not a device for
reminding the reader of previously mentioned entities, actions and states of affairs. In other
words, it is not what linguists call an anaphoric relation. However, it is a cohesive device
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because it signals relationships that can only be fully understood through reference to other
parts of the text. There are four different types of conjunction — temporality (e.g. first),
causality (e.g. because), addition (e.g. and) and adversity (e.g. however).

The cohesive devices themselves do not create the relationships in the text; what they do is to
make the relationships explicit.

2.1.4 Lexical cohesion


Halliday and Hasan (1976), the two major categories of lexical cohesion are reiteration and
collocation.
Reiteration
Reiteration includes repetition, synonym or near synonym, super-ordinate, and general word.
Reiteration thus fulfils a similar semantic function to cohesive reference.
REPETITION
What we lack in a newspaper is what we should get. In a word, a ‘popular’ newspaper may be
the winning ticket.
SYNONYM
You could try reversing the car up the slope. The incline isn’t all that steep.
SUPERORDINATE1
Pneumonia has arrived with the cold and wet conditions. The illness is striking everyone from
infants to the elderly.
Collocation
Collocation can cause major problems for discourse analysis because it includes all those
items in a text that are semantically related. In some cases, this makes it difficult to decide
whether a cohesive relationship exists or not.
2d Plants characteristically synthesize complex organic substances from simple inorganic raw
materials. In green plants, the energy of this process is sunlight. The plants can use this energy
because they possess the green pigment chlorophyll. Photosynthesis or ‘light synthesis’, is a
‘self feeding’, or autotrophic process. In extract 2d, we could say that the following items are
examples of lexical collocation because they all belong to the scientific field of biology:
plants . synthesise ... organic ... inorganic ... green plants ... energy . sunlight... plants... energy
... green... chlorophyll : .. photosynthesis... light synthesis . . . self feeding . ..
‘Closed’ lexical items include all grammatical words — such as pronouns, conjunctions and
prepositions — membership of which is finite. In contrast, there is no limit to the items that
can be used to express collocation. This means that it is difficult to establish sets of regularly
co-occurring words and phrases.

1
SUPERORDINATE: a word whose meaning includes a group of other words: "Pet" is a superordinate of
"dog" and "cat”.

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