UNIT 29. THE ANALYSIS AND ARTICULATION OF DISCOURSE. COHESION AND COHERENCE.

ANAPHORA AND CATAPHORA. CONNECTORS. DEIXIS.

The topic selected for this official competitive exam is topic number 29. In order to provide a
coherent development of its content, we have adhered faithfully to the name of the topic and
have divided it into four parts. The first one deals with the analysis of discourse where it will be
analyzed the most important concepts on this area. Secondly, we will be looking at the cohesive
devices that are used to hold the text together as a whole to achieve coherent texts, together
with anaphora and cataphora. And finally, the last two parts are especially relevant because
they deal with connectors and linkers; and with deixis, which we can connect with pronouns and
adverbs. We will put an end to this topic with a conclusion, the didactic implications that this topic
has in the secondary classroom, and the bibliography consulted for its elaboration.

Before starting to analyse the most relevant concepts in this topic, we would like to justify why it is
worth writing and reading. In this paper we will see the importance of this area in the teaching of a
foreign language, highlighting the significance of language as communication. If we follow the
current legislation, we are told through the objectives for the stage that the ability to learn a foreign
language is paramount in today’s society. As teachers it is our duty to ensure that our methodology
achieves this objective. This topic sheds light on concepts that our students do not need to know
but that are used in everyday situations subconsciously. Moreover, the topic pinpoints the most
important features that a text needs to include in order to achieve coherent and cohesive texts,
which will help our students with their presentations and writings. Finally, deixis has a strong
connection with personal pronouns and adverbs, and connectives with all the connectors that we
advise our students to use in their productions.

Bearing in mind that this topic deals with text and discourse and the different features that can be
found in a text, the content of this topic is closely related to topics 31, 32, 33, 34, 35 and 36, and it
also turns out useful for us, candidates, as it covers concepts that are eligible for the practical exam.

1. INTRODUCTION

The term ‘discourse’, in the words of Crystal, means “a continuous stretch of language larger than
a sentence, often constituting a coherent unit” (1992). This ‘unit’ cannot be studied without
considering both the communicative intention of the speaker and the context within which
the language is used.

In order to qualify either a written or a spoken text as a discourse, seven criteria were suggested
by Beaugrande (1981), namely the Seven Standards of Textuality. These include:

- Cohesion: the grammatical relationship between parts of a sentence

- Coherence: the logical connection between statements
 - Situationality: the text has to have meaning within the context
- Acceptability: the message has to be relevant for the receiver to a certain extent
- Intentionality: this is related to the speaker’s purpose of the communication
- Informativity: some new information has to be added in the discourse
- Intertextuality: a text can often be dependent on the receiver’s knowledge of other
texts.
2. THE ANALYSIS AND ARTICULATION OF DISCOURSE

The term ‘discourse analysis’ stands for the study of conversation since the science of texts “has
developed an interest in the analysis of conversation as a mode of social organization and
interaction” (Beaugrande & Dressler, 1988).

Discourse analysis looks at the way that chunks of language can fit together in order to create
meaning from the aspect of a connected whole. When we come to analyse discourse, we
have to take into account three main areas according to Halliday (1994):

- Theme, which stands for what the message is concerned with: the point of departure for
what the speaker is going to say.
- Focus, which is directed towards the listener and controlled by the speaker, and it is the
part that the speaker wishes the listener to pay attention to.
- Reference, which relates to an element of the text that acts as the referential point for
something that has already been, or is going to be, mentioned in the text.

Discourse analysis then reveals major factors about the standards of textuality by exploring:

- Semantic standards: cohesion (how the components of a surface text are connected
within a sequence) and coherence (how the concepts and relations which underlie the
text are mutually accessible and relevant)
- Pragmatic standards: the attitudes of producers by means of intentionality (the goal-
directed use of conversation), of receivers by means of acceptability (immediate
feedback), and also informativity (the selection of contributions to conversation)
- The communicative setting in terms of situationality (the context; intonation contours),
and intertextuality (how to frame the text in regard to other people’s texts in the same
discourse).
2.1 Related Notions

In order to fully understand our current analysis on the pragmatics of discourse, we encounter
the following notions that need clarifying:
 Text Linguistics,

The term stands for “any work in language science devoted to the text as the primary object
of inquiry” (Beaugrande & Dressler, 1988). Many fields have approached the study of texts:
linguistics, anthropology, psychology, stylistics, literary studies and so on, yet the most important
is that of sociology, semantics, and pragmatics.

- Sociology explores conversational studies and gives way to discourse analysis

- Semantics goes with coherence, cohesion, and connectors
- Pragmatics deals with speech acts and contexts

Back in Greece and Rome, there was a preoccupation with texts, and the first foundation for
the analysis of texts and its articulation is drawn from the notion of ‘rhetoric’. Traditional
rhetoricians had the task of training public orators on invention, disposition, elocution, and
memorization before the actual act of speaking. Afterwards, in the Middle Ages, rhetoric was
based on grammar and logic. All in all, rhetoric still shares concerns with the ‘text linguistics’ we
know today, for instance: texts as interaction, as an expression of ideas, as the arrangement of
ideas and its position within the discourse, and texts as judgment which depends on the effects
upon the audience.

Sentence VS Utterance

As stated above, language does not occur in solitary words or sentences but builds texts in
sequences of sentences. This means that a ‘sentence’ is defined, in grammatical terms, as the
highest unit in the rank scale. It is also indeterminate since it is often difficult to decide where
one sentence begins and another starts (spoken language). Yet, an utterance is defined in
terms of meaning and use in connected discourse, that is, in terms of its communicative
function.

Speech Acts

The Speech Act Theory holds a link between meanings, language use and extralinguistic
functions. Hence, one its basic characteristics is the social interaction between ‘speaker’ and
‘hearer’, where the former tries to change the mind of the actions of the hearer by producing
an utterance. We may classify the intention of the speaker with statements, questions,
commands, and exclamations, according to the kind of sentence he/she is using, such as
declarative, interrogative, imperative, or exclamative respectively. According to Searle (1969)
the intentions or purposes are divided into:

- Assertives: telling people how things are by stating

- Directives: trying to get people to do things by commanding or requesting
- Expressives: expressing our feelings and attitudes by thinking, forgiving, or blaming
 - Declaratives: bringing about changes by causing correspondence between the
content and reality through naming, appointing, and sacking, among others
- Commissives: committing ourselves to some future action by promising or offering

Communicative context.

The context of a text takes into account the intention of the meaning, how that intention is to
be interpreted by someone, and the environment in which the message is delivered, as well as
the previous knowledge of the receiver. The term ‘context’ is defined as “the state of affairs of
a communicative situation in which communicative events take place” (van Dijk, 1981).
Hence, a context must have a linguistically relevant set of characteristics for the formulation,
conditions, and rules for the adequate use of utterances, for instance, it must be ‘appropriate’
and ‘satisfactory’ for the given utterance.

The notion ‘context’ is rather static so we may introduce the term ‘communicative’ so that an
event may be successful if a given context changes into a specific new one. For instance, the
conditions of morphological, syntactic, and semantic utterances may change from oral
contexts to written ones. Therefore, some utterances which are appropriate in some contexts
may not be ‘acceptable’ in other contexts.

3. COHESION AND COHERENCE

In order to achieve coherence, we have to pay attention to the cohesive devices that are
used to hold the text together as a whole. According to Halliday and Hasan (1976), cohesion
is the combination of registers and various devices that go to make a text coherent.

3.1 Cohesion

This concept refers to relations of meaning that exist within the text, and it occurs where the
interpretation of some element is dependent on that of another. In other words, an element in the
discourse cannot be effectively decoded except by recourse to it, and, when it happens, a relation
cohesion is set up. Halliday and Hasan (1976) proposed devices to achieve cohesion, namely:

- Reference: it ties one part of the text to a previous or a forthcoming part, whether it refers to
other words in the text (endophoric reference) or to elements in the context which are clear
for the participants (exophoric reference). There are reference devices that can be
considered, for instance: personal pronouns (“He really enjoys his job”), demonstratives (“This
is the reason why I did this”), or comparatives (“The same happened to me”). Reference uses
anaphora and cataphora to refer to words that are mentioned somewhere else in the text.
o Anaphora refers to something that has been mentioned before: “When you’ve read
the magazine, put it back on the shelf”.
 o Cataphora points ahead to something that has not yet been mentioned: “When
you’ve read it, put the magazine back on the shelf”. The effect of this can be to add
end-focus, placing the stress on the part of the sentence that comes at the end.
- Substitution: it is a method of referring to a class of items, rather than something more specific,
such as is the case with reference: “Did you find the blankets? Only the blue ones”. In this
example we can see that ‘ones’ refers not to the blankets alone, but to the ones that are
blue.
- Ellipsis: it refers to omissions, which are clarified by the context or by the previous information.
Look at the following example: “Were you calling me? No, I wasn’t”. Here, the short answer
‘no I wasn’t’ doesn’t need ‘calling you’ to be added as the context makes it perfectly clear.
- Conjunctions: these are used to help the listener or the reader to be able to interpret the
relationship between clauses. The most general categories are those of opposition (or,
however, conversely), addition (and, likewise, moreover), variation (well, anyway, by the
way), time (formerly, then, last), or cause-condition (so, because, as a result).

These are some of the cohesive ties that go together to make a text coherent.

3.2 Coherence

The principle of coherence basically means ‘to stick together’; hence, it is the linking of thought to
thought in such a way that the meaning can be easily followed from sentence to sentence. Without
this connection or continuity, the receiver’s mind would be confused. If you are to guide your
receiver, then your sentences and paragraphs must hold together in the development of your
thought. This quality of coherence can be achieved in part by careful attention to certain points of
grammar. Nevertheless, more important is the logical progression of thought; that is, a paragraph
should be constructed so that its sentences follow each other in a natural order with each sentence
linked to the previous one.

Therefore, to be coherent, we must follow the ‘co-operative’ principle (Grice, 1975), which
describes how people achieve effective conversational communication in common social
situations, that is, how listeners and speakers act cooperatively and mutually accept one another
to be understood in a particular way. Accordingly, the cooperative principle is divided into Grice's
four maxims of conversation, called the Gricean maxims: quantity, quality, relation, and manner.
These four maxims describe specific rational principles observed by people who follow the
cooperative principle in pursuit of effective communication. In a nutshell, our talk exchanges do
not normally consist of a succession of disconnected remarks and would not be rational if they did.
They are to some degree at least, cooperative efforts, and each participant recognizes in them a
common purpose, or at least a mutually accepted direction.
 4. CONNECTIVES

To achieve coherence, a writer must arrange his ideas in an orderly fashion and bind them together
by means of connective words, phrases, clauses or sentences, so that the reader can follow the
writer’s ideas without difficulty, as it happens when indicating order (first, next, final), time (now,
meanwhile, later), position in space (to the right, on the left, above), adding ideas (moreover, also,
besides), illustrating ideas (for instance, for example), contrasting ideas (but, still, yet), showing result
(consequently, therefore).

The function of connectives is to express relations between utterances. The following grammatical
categories are related to the set of expressions mentioned above:

- Conjunctions: join sentences by means of

o co-ordination: (FANBOYS) = for and nor but or yet so > “My dog AND her dog”
o subordination: after, although, before, except, if, since, once, as, and unless >
“I am not going UNLESS you come with me”
- Disjunctions: these link two sentences where at least one of them is true: “Mary is a singer or
a poet?”. Moreover, both sentences can be true, then inclusive interpretation: “Nobody ate
either rice or beans”. But never both sentences can be false, for instance by saying on a
sunny day: “Is it raining or snowing?”, this would lead to confusion since none of the options
are true.
- Conditionals: these link clauses that are dependent upon some sort of action, so that one of
the two clauses in the sentence is going to be a dependent clause while the other clause is
going to be an independent clause acting as a complete sentence: “Even if she loses her
job, she will make a living”
- Contrastives: these connectors function to introduce information that contrasts with or differs
from information given in previous sentences. Contrastive connectors can be divided into
four groups: concessive (however), adversative (conversely), argumentative (on the
contrary), and replacive (instead).

5. DEIXIS

Deixis derives from Ancient Greek meaning “pointing, indicating, reference”. In linguistics, deixis is
the use of general words and phrases to refer to a specific time, place, or person in context. Words
are deictic if their semantic meaning is fixed but their denoted meaning varies depending on time
and/or place.

- Person deixis is concerned with the grammatical persons involved in an utterance: those
directly involved (the speaker, the addressee), those not directly involved (those who hear
the utterance but who are not being directly addressed), and those mentioned in the
 utterance (Alice is… She likes…). The distinctions are generally indicated by pronouns, but in
many languages with gendered pronouns, the third-person masculine pronouns (he/his/him
in English) are used as a default when referring to a person whose gender is unknown or
irrelevant: “To each his own”. Yet, ‘they’ is accepted as a singular term used for she/he
though sometimes it is limited to informal constructions.
- Spatial deixis shows the relation between space and the location of the participants in the
discourse. English makes use of the adverbs ‘here’ (close to the speaker) and ‘there’
(relatively distant from the speaker) for the basic distinction. Moreover, the verbs ‘come’ and
‘go’, for instance, also retain a spatial deictic sense when they are used to mark movement
towards the speaker or away from the speaker. Speakers seem to be able to project
themselves into other locations prior to being in these locations. When uttering the phrase:
“I’ll come later”, speakers accomplish a mental movement to the addressee's location,
which is sometimes called deictic projection. Finally, something that is physically close will be
treated by the speaker as psychologically close (I don’t like this/these); and something that
is physically distant will also tend to be treated as psychologically distant (grab me
that/those).
- Temporal deixis concerns itself with the various times involved in and referred to in an
utterance. This includes time adverbs like "now", "then", and "soon", as well as different verbal
tenses. Time Deixis is an expression in relation to a certain point of time when the speaker
produces an utterance. There is a distinction between coding time and receiving time in the
written or recorded use of language. The deictic centre for time deixis is “now”, the meaning
of “now” is the span of time including the moment of utterance. Furthermore, it is being
counted either backwards or forward from the coding time in calendrical units. Those
expressions are for example, “yesterday” or “the day before” if you count backwards and
“tomorrow” or “next Thursday” if you count forward. The most important aspect of time deixis
is tense because every sentence refers to a certain time of an event. The proximal tense is
close to the current situation which means that it is in the present tense and the distal form is
distant from the current situation and therefore in the past tense.
- Discourse deixis has to do with keeping track of the references in the unfolding discourse. It
refers to chunks of the discourse that are located within the discourse itself, either to earlier
or forthcoming segments. Discourse deixis is different from anaphora and cataphora
because it does not relate to a specific item but to a stretch of discourse. For example, “It
was all because of the Berlin Wall”, the marker ‘It’ refers to everything which follows, not to a
particular item. That is discourse deixis. Simply responding to an anecdote with “That's
fascinating” is an instance where one person's entire discourse is referred to with the term
‘That’. Equally, we can include in our own discourse something like “Listen to this ...”
 6. CONCLUSION

For the purpose of achieving that our discourse appears as a unified whole, the speaker has to use
the devices of cohesion and coherence, as well as the other areas that we have looked at, such
as connectors and deixis. The teacher must ensure that the student has as much exposure to these
items as possible if he/she is to become a user of English, and if the texts, written or spoken, are to
appear as a unified whole. Cohesion and coherence contribute greatly to achieving and
articulating discourse. Quoting Benjamin Franklin, “Reading makes a full man, meditation a
profound man, discourse a clear man.”

7. DIDACTIC IMPLICATIONS

According to LOMLOE 3/2020 and (autonomous community decree), the content of this topic
highlights textual aspects and would be of great support in order to help students with the processes
of understanding and producing texts. In that sense. It is also connected with the content blocks of
‘communication’ and ‘multilingualism’ mentioned in Royal Decree 217/2022. Moreover, the
content of this topic promotes the Linguistic Communication Competence, and it is connected
with its descriptors CCL1, CCL2 and CCL3, following the aforementioned RD.

The personal proposal to work on this topic in the classroom would be by as follows:

1. Warm up: students are given a text in which they will have to underline the words that they
think are connectors. This activity will be self-assessed at the end of the session when they
incorporate the new knowledge.
2. Presentation: we are going to watch a video about the connectors and then we will explain
a bit of theory about the different types and how to use them correctly.
3. Practice: we are going to do an online quiz on this matter to find out if the new content has
been understood. They can correct now the first activity and realise they have incorporated
new knowledge; otherwise, it is time to clear out any of their doubts.
4. Production: ‘Connect-Bingo’ gives students practice reading and saying connectives. In
small groups, each student is given a laminated bingo card with nine conjunctions on it. To
mark that space students must give a sentence with that connector in it. The game leader
for each group pulls pieces of paper out of a bag, one at a time. The first student to have all
nine sentences complete calls out 'Bingo'.

It is worth mentioning that all the activities can be adapted to different levels and to different
specific needs. For instance, not only the first text-activity but also the worksheets used for
practicing, can be modulated for these requirements in degrees of difficulty. Likewise, the Bingo
could also be graded in different levels from basic to advanced connectors.
As teachers, we can also deal with this topic in an interdisciplinary way by linking the curriculum
with the Spanish language, studying, and analysing the elements and features shown before, and
applying them to the students’ native language.

8. BIBLIOGRAPHY

Cook, G. (1989). Discourse. Oxford University Press.

Grice (1975). Logic and Conversation

Brown and Yule. (1983). Discourse Analysis. Cambridge University Press.

R. Searle (1969). Speech Acts. Cambridge University Press

Halliday and Hasan. (1976). Cohesion in English. Longman.

De Beaugrande, R., & Dressler, W. (1981). Introduction to text linguistics. London & New York:
Longman.

Teun A. van Dijk (1981). Studies in the pragmatics of discourse. The Hague/Berlin: Mouton