When a referring expression links with another referring expression within the co-text, we say

that it is cohesive with the previous mention of the referent in the text. This is part of what is known as

Lecture no. 2
INTRODUCTORY CONCEPTS TO PRAGMATICS AND DISCOURSE (PART TWO)

grammatical cohesion; it is what meshes the text together. Let us take another example:
We have been established by an Act of Parliament as an independent body to eliminate

2 CO-TEXT

discrimination against disabled people and to secure equal opportunities for them. To achieve

Understanding concepts

this, we have set ourselves the goal of: A society where all disabled people can participate fully
as equal citizens. (The Disability Rights Commission leaflet 2000)

grammatical cohesion

Here, the personal pronoun them refers to the same referent as the noun disabled people did.

- endophoric reference
- substitution and ellipsis

There is also grammatical cohesion through the phrase To achieve this, in which the demonstrative

lexical cohesion

pronoun this is cohesive with the aim of eliminating discrimination against disabled people and

2.1 Co-textual context

securing equal opportunities for them. Endophora avoids unnecessary repetition. This is how the

We saw in the previous lecture that there are three sorts of context: the situational, the cultural

example would have sounded without it:

and interpersonal background one, and the co-textual. This lecture deals with the co-textual context,

We have been established by an Act of Parliament as an independent body to eliminate

discrimination against disabled people and to secure equal opportunities for disabled people. To

the context of the text itself, known as the co-text. If we go back to the hill walking excerpt:

achieve the aim of eliminating discrimination against disabled people and securing equal

DM // I went with Francesca (0.5) and David.

opportunities for disabled people, we have set ourselves the goal of: A society where all

AF Uhuh?

disabled people can participate fully as equal citizens.

DM Francescas room-mate. (2) And Alices - a friend of Alices from London (1). There were
six of us. Yeah we did a lot of hill walking.

Notice how the repetition makes the text now seem over-explicit; it sounds as if the writer is
assuming that readers will not understand unless it is all spelt out. It gives more information than is

// AF Uhm.

needed, as all readers would be able to make the connection between the pronoun and the phrase that it

We can see that the personal pronouns us and the we refer back to Francesca, David, the
room-mate and the friend, who are all mentioned elsewhere in the text. The interlocutors assume that

links with, if their short-term memory is functioning normally.

There are two types of endophora:

everyone in the conversation has enough knowledge of what they have been saying, to be able to infer

anaphora

who the us and the we include.

cataphora

2.2 Grammatical cohesion

In the example above, the pronouns them and this link back to something that went before

Reference

in the preceding text. This is called anaphora, and it is the most frequent of the two types. The other,

We can look at how the co-text hangs together from the point of view of reference, which, as
you will remember from lecture no.1, is the act of using referring expressions to refer to referents in
the context. We saw then that when there is no previous mention of the referent in the text, we call it
exophoric reference, dependent on the context outside the text for its meaning. In the excerpt above,

cataphora, is the opposite pronouns link forward to a referent in the text that follows. This is in
evidence in the next example, which is typical of the opening sentences of books:
Students (not unlike yourselves) compelled to buy paperback copies of his novels notably the
first, Travel Light, though there has lately been some academic interest in his more surreal and

the example was the proper nouns Francesca and David pointing to people not already mentioned in

existential and perhaps even anarchistic second novel, Brother Pig or encountering some

the conversation but in the common cultural background. The reference of the us and we, on the

essay from When the Saints in a shiny heavy anthology of mid-century literature costing $12.50,

other hand, is not exophoric because the pronouns refer to items within the same text; it is endophoric

imagine that Henry Bech, like thousands less famous than he, is rich. He is not. (Updike

reference.

1970:11)

Here, we meet copies of his novels before we know who he is. It is only several lines later
that we learn that the possessive adjective his links forward to the proper nouns Henry Bech in the
text that comes after. As you can see, whereas anaphora refers back, cataphora refers forward.
Here, it is a stylistic choice, to keep the reader in suspense as to who is being talked about. More
usually, the noun that the pronoun links forward to follows soon after:

knowledge of what went before or after within the same text, and partly on background knowledge of
the cultural or interpersonal context, in this case what is associated with universities.
Substitution
Endophoric reference, with personal and demonstrative pronouns and possessives, is only
one form of grammatical cohesion. There are two other forms of grammatical cohesion:

An actor with whom she was rehearsing caught Coral Brownes fancy. Informed by a colleague

substitution and

that she was most unlikely to get anywhere with that particular man, she bet the colleague a

ellipsis.

pound that she would. Next morning, the colleague who had accepted her bet asked her, loudly

Let us start with substitution. The next example is taken from a song about the characterless

and meaningfully, in the presence of the actor, Well, dear, do you owe me anything? Browne
replied, disappointedly: Seven and six. (Rees 1999:30)

little houses of the pretentious lower-middle class:

Little boxes on the hillside,

Here, the she links cataphorically with Coral Browne. Since seven shillings and six pence
was much less than a pound, we must suppose that she was not very successful.

Little boxes made of ticky-tacky,

Little boxes, little boxes,

We can summarise reference with a diagram to make it easier to grasp:

Little boxes, all the same.

Theres a green one and a pink one
And a blue one and a yellow one
And theyre all made out of ticky-tacky
And they all look just the same. (Reynolds 1963)

The lines Theres a green one and a pink one / And a blue one and a yellow one contain the
substitute one. As with endophoric reference, substitution holds the text together and avoids
repetition: a green one replaces a green box, the one substituting for the box. The plural
substitute is ones. We could have substituted boxes in line 2 of the song with ones, and said Little
There are occasions when the noun phrases (these can be nouns or pronouns) are not linked
explicitly to each other, but one noun phrase is linked to entities simply associated with the other noun

ones made of ticky-tacky, but then the song would have lost some of its cynicism. Substitution tends
to be endophoric: the noun phrase being substituted is usually in the text. Take this childrens poem:

phrase. This is called associative endophora. Here is an example from an article entitled Pay

The Polar Bear is unaware

attention, please from the British national newspaper the Guardian:

Of cold that cuts me through:

Students are almost twice as likely to get top degree grades if they are taught by good university
teachers, new research shows. The study suggests that the wide differences in numbers of firsts

For why? He has a coat of hair.

I wish I had one too. (Belloc 1896)

and upper second class degree awarded at universities comes down in large part to the work of

Here, readers know from the co-text that, in I wish I had one too, the one replaces a coat of

inspirational lecturers, not just extra spending on students for books, libraries or computers.

hair. In the next example, the substitute so coheres with an adjectival phrase. It is from a Guardian

(Major and Plomin, the Guardian: 14 April 2001)

womens page article entitled Does length matter?:

Here, readers can infer what lecturers, students, books, libraries or computers are being
1

talked about, by drawing from their knowledge of the presuppositional pool of universities.
Associative endophora is half way between endophora and exophora, because it depends partly on

Self-confidence should not be a gender issue. Boys are not born more confident than girls.
Society makes them so because it traditionally values their skills and aptitudes above those of
women. (Winterson, the Guardian: 14 April 2001)

We understand makes them so to mean makes them more confident than girls.
1

a combination of resources, funds, etc., for common advantage. Rom. fond comun

Ellipsis

separated by other nouns, the idea would have been more clearly expressed by repeating the noun, as

The other form of grammatical cohesion is ellipsis. Take a look at this snatch from Catch 22,

in A home you will enjoy living in.

the famous World War II novel:

Finally, it should be noted that the use of grammatical cohesion varies from genre to genre. It is

Hes afraid of you, Yossarian said. Hes afraid youre going to die of pneumonia. Hed

much less likely to occur in texts which strive to be completely unambiguous, such as legal texts, or

better be afraid, Chief White Halfoat said. A deep low laugh rumbled through his massive

some kinds of instruction texts.

chest. I will, too, the first chance I get. You just wait and see. (Joseph Heller 1962)

2.3 Lexical cohesion

I will, too is an example of ellipsis: Chief White Halfoat misses out a piece of text. He means

We began this lecture by saying that grammatical cohesion (reference, substitution and

I will die of pneumonia but he omits die of pneumonia because it is not necessary. Just like

ellipsis) holds texts together. Cohesion is also maintained by lexical cohesion. The following diagram

substitution, ellipsis avoids repetition and depends on the hearer or readers being able to retrieve the

summarises what both types of cohesion consist of, and points to what the rest of this lecture will

missing words from the surrounding co-text. The same happens in the next snippet of a conversation

discuss, in terms of lexical cohesion.

between two 16-year-old female students:

Catriona What was he doing? Tell me, make me cringe2.
Jess Oh nothing to make you cringe or anything. He was just, he was just like . . . saying you
know just stuff that was really pretty well sick.
Catriona Oh last night, last night he was as well with Romeo and Juliet. (BNC: kp6 Catriona,
1993.)

Catriona uses ellipsis in her he was as well, and thus avoids saying he was saying stuff that
was really pretty well sick as well. Ellipsis is a typical feature of both spoken and written text,
although it occurs more often in conversation because conversation tends to be less explicit. Even in
literature, when conversation is included, it is often full of ellipsis. In the Graham Greene novel, The
Human Factor (1978), one character asks, How are things with you, if I may ask, sir? and another
replies, My boys sick. Measles. Oh, nothing to worry about. No complications. Here, the informal
utterances Measles. Oh, nothing to worry about. No complications would have read less naturally as

Repetition
Of all the lexical cohesion devices, the most common form is repetition, which is simply
repeated words or word-phrases, threading through the text. Take this example from D. H. Lawrences

Hes got measles. Oh, theres nothing to worry about. He has no complications.
Both substitution and ellipsis can only be used when there is no ambiguity as to what is being
substituted or ellipted. If there is more than one possibility, the result can be confusion. Take this
advertisement, quoted by Richard Lederer in his More Anguished English (1987): FOR SALE: Very
unique home in downtown Craigsville. Large lot. Many trees. One you will enjoy living in. The
advertisement reads strangely because of the fact that, since One you will enjoy living in comes
straight after Many trees, it sounds as if the One contains ellipsis of tree and means One tree you
will enjoy living in. Of course One is a substitute for a home, but because Very unique home in
downtown Craigsville is far away from One you will enjoy living in and the phrases have become

short story Odour of Chrysanthemums:

The child put the pale chrysanthemums to her lips, murmuring:
Dont they smell beautiful!
Her mother gave a short laugh.
No, she said, not to me. It was chrysanthemums when I married him, and chrysanthemums
when you were born, and the first time they ever brought him home drunk, hed got brown
chrysanthemums in his button-hole. (Lawrence 1981)

Here, the repeated chrysanthemums have the effect of pounding through the text and showing
how they have been a repeated and unwelcome feature of the mothers life. We saw a similar
repetition in the song Little boxes on the hillside above, where the repetition contributed to the

cynicism. Substitution and ellipsis avoid repetition; lexical repetition exploits it for stylistic effect.

to shrink, bend, or crouch, esp. in fear or servility;

Synonyms

General words

Instead of repeating the exact same word, a speaker or writer can use another word that means

The last form of lexical cohesion that we are going to cover here is the general word. These

the same or almost the same. This is a synonym. Here, we are back to avoiding repetition. Take this

can be general nouns, as in thing, stuff, place, person, woman and man, or general verbs, as

little excerpt from the Times Higher Education Supplement

in do and happen. In a way, the general word is a higher level superordinate: it is the umbrella term

At some 75 cm across and capable of cracking open a coconut shell with its formidable claws,

that can cover almost everything. In the following, Peter, a 49-year-old chemist, uses the general noun

the land-dwelling coconut crab is your beach loungers3 worst nightmare. Fortunately for the

place to refer back either to the poly or to the city:

sunbather, the worlds largest terrestrial arthropod has seemingly always been confined to

and so he went off to Wolverhampton Poly which he selected for, you know, all the usual

tropical islands across the Pacific and Indian oceans. (THES: 17 November 2000)

reasons, reasonable place, reasonable course, a reasonable this a reasonable that t-term to do

Here you will see that the land-dwelling coconut crab and the worlds largest terrestrial

computer science which of course all the kids want to do now erm twentieth centu - no it isnt

arthropod are two ways of referring to the same animal, just as your beach lounger and the

its a sort of nineteen eighties version of wanting to be an engine driver. (BNC: kc3 Frederick,

sunbather are the same person. As the saying goes, variety is the spice of life: using different ways

1992)

General nouns and verbs do not carry much information, in themselves; they mostly depend on

of referring to an entity makes for more interesting prose or conversation.

Superordinates

the co-text for their meaning, so are used when hearers and readers can identify what is being referred

In order to observe the lexical cohesion device of superordinates, let us go back to Odour of

to from the rest of the text. Like pronouns, substitutes, ellipsis, synonyms and superordinates, they
avoid repetition, and give just the amount of information as is necessary. Once again, just as with

Chrysanthemums and continue with the story:

The candle-light glittered on the lustre-glasses, on the two vases that held some of the pink

grammatical cohesion, it should be noted that lexical cohesion varies from genre to genre. Synonyms

chrysanthemums, and on the dark mahogany. There was a cold, deathly smell of

and superordinates are unsuitable for some types of text, such as technical or scientific ones where key

chrysanthemums in the room. Elizabeth stood looking at the flowers. (Lawrence 1981)

words cannot be substituted for other more general terms without precise meaning being lost.

Here again there is repetition of chrysanthemums, but then they are referred to with the words
the flowers. This not a synonym of chrysanthemums; it is a more general term known as a
superordinate, an umbrella term that includes pansies, tulips, roses and so on. This is another way
of avoiding repetition and still referring to the referent with a noun. Lawrence could have used a
personal pronoun in endophoric reference instead, and said Elizabeth stood looking at them, although
this might have given them less prominence, and he does want them at the centre of his story.
We can use what we know about superordinates to help explain the absurdity of the rhyme:
The elephant is a bonny bird
It flits from bough to bough
It makes its nest in a rhubarb tree
And whistles like a cow

Of course, bird is the wrong superordinate for elephant, because bird includes seagull,
blackbird, hummingbird and so on, and elephant comes under the superordinate animal, which
includes giraffe, cow, dog and so on. Even these can be superordinates on a lower level, for
example dog is the overall term including labrador, poodle, Irish wolfhound and so on.
3

a person or thing that lounges.