Cohesion
The concept of cohesion is a structural one in that grammatical dependencies make a text hold together and hence becomes cohesive.
It is regarded as an explicit indicator of relations between topics in a text. It refers to the text-internal relationship of linguistic elements that are overtly linked via lexical and grammatical devices across sentence boundaries.
The five cohesive ties as developed by them are five types: 'reference', 'substitution', 'ellipsis', 'conjunction', and 'lexical cohesion'. They create relations of identity or comparison, logicosemantic relations or similarity. In the case of coreference and lexical cohesion, cohesive chains may contain two or more elements and may span local or global stretches of a text (Halliday & Hasan 1976; Widdowson 1979).
Halliday and Hasan, (1976), defined two general categories of cohesion: grammatical cohesion and lexical cohesion. Halliday and Hasan, (1976), develop lexical cohesion to the perspective of texture. According to their categorization (1976, 1985), lexical cohesion is composed of reiteration, synonymy, hyponymy and collocation.
Halliday, Michael A. K. & Ruqaiya Hasan. 1976. Cohesion in English. London: Longman Publishing.
Cohesion:
- the act or state of sticking together tightly;
- the union between similar plant parts or organs;
- molecular attraction by which the particles of a body are united throughout the mass [Webster’s Dictionary].
If there is cohesion within a society, organization, or group, the different members fit together well and form a united whole [Collins English Dictionary].
Cohesion is one of the two qualities that give a written or spoken text unity and purpose, the other being coherence. It refers to the use of linguistic devices to join sentences, including conjunctions, reference words, substitution, and lexical devices, such as repetition of words, collocations, and lexical groups.
Example: the second sentence above has cohesive devices such as conjunctions (and, such as, including), articles (the), references (it), and collocations (join _____ together, lexical groups).
In the classroom: cohesion is an extensive area and can be approached at a discrete item level, e.g., practicing article use or differing synonyms. Teachers can also make learners aware of the cohesive features of a text, asking them to identify examples of reference, substitution, lexical cohesion, and conjunction [British Council].
Cohesion. British Council. Retrieved from: https://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/article/cohesion
Cohesion. Collins English Dictionary. Retrieved from: https://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/cohesion
Cohesion. Webster’s Dictionary. Retrieved from: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/cohesion