3 Sem Cohesion and Coherence

Cohesion: Cohesion, like other semantic relations such as

synonymy, antonymy, polysemy, is the relationship of meaning of
one item with another item/s in the text or discourse. According to
Halliday and Hasan (1976), “Cohesion refers to the relations of
meaning that exist within the text, and is expressed through the
stratal organization of the text… It occurs where the
interpretation of some elements in the text is dependent on that
of another” ( p 4). Taboada (2004) defines cohesion as ‘the
internal hanging together of the text’. To Yule (2008) ‘Cohesion is
the tie and connection that exist within the text’. It is the part of
the system of a language; a type of intra-sentence relation of an
item with either the preceding or following item/s in the text. In
communication process, cohesion gives insights into how the
writer structures what he/she wants to convey. Halliday and
Hasan (1976) are of the view that cohesion is expressed partly
through the grammar, and partly through the vocabulary in the
text. It is therefore, there can be two types of cohesion:
grammatical cohesion, and lexical cohesion. Grammatical
cohesion is the cohesive tie that is expressed through the
grammatical system of a language such as reference,
substitution, ellipsis, and conjunction. Followings are the
illustrative examples that show the cohesive tie in italics in each:
(i) Wow, how beautiful flower vessel! How much does it cost?
[reference]
(ii) You are going to attend the party? If so, what about these
agenda? [substitution] (iii) We can buy those apples if we need to
(buy those apples). [ellipsis]
(iv) He passed the exam. However, he did not obtain A plus.
[conjunction] Lexical cohesion, on the other hand, is ‘the cohesive
effect achieved by the selection of vocabulary’ (Halliday & Hasan,
1976, p 274). Lexical cohesion can be realized in reiteration
(using the same, or semantically related vocabulary such as
repetition, synonym, superordinate, general word) and in
collocation (co-occurrence of lexical items). Followings are the
examples showing cohesive tie in italics.
(i) Reiteration: I have a puppy. The puppy is black. [Repetition] I
have a puppy. The pup is black. [Synonym] I have a puppy. The
animal is black. [Superordinate] I have a puppy. The baby dog is
black. [General word]
(ii) Collocation: With their hammer-nail relation, the boys won the
match. 2.2 Coherence: A text is formed not only with the
structured string of words, but also with the contextual
occurrence of the sentences. Coherence, generally, is the
contextual appearance of the utterances in the text. More
specifically, it is the contextual fitness of in the text that
contributes in understanding the meaning or message. According
to Taboada (2004), “Coherence is the hanging together of the
text with relation to its context of situation or culture” (p. 158).
Yule (2008) views, “Coherence is everything fitting together well,
and it is not something that exists in words or structures, but
something that exists in people” (p 126). Coherence is the result
of the interpretation of the meaning of the text, and it depends on
the relation between the audience and the text
6 (Tanskanen, 2006). It is therefore, the coherence of a text can
be perceived only if the receiver’s background knowledge is
sufficient enough to interpret the linkage of messages in the
discourse. The examples below show the coherent, and non-
coherent texts:
(i) A text with coherence: A: Did you bring the car? B: Yes, I
brought it yesterday.
(ii) A text with no coherence: A: Where did you go last week? B:
That sounds good. My brother paints it.
2.3 Coherence and cohesion for communication: We have
discussed that cohesion is the intra-text connectedness of the
items, and coherence is the appropriateness of the contextual
occurrence of the text so as to make the sense of the message
conveyed. In cohesion, the surface elements appear connectedly,
whereas in coherence, the elements of knowledge or sense
appear to form conceptual connectivity. Some researchers such
as Morgan and Seller (1980), Carrell (1982) claim that cohesion is
not sufficient enough to make a text connected or appear a
unified whole. It is because a highly cohesive text with lots of
connections and ties may cause difficulty in the interpretation of
the message as Yule (2008, p 126) presents the following
example: My father bought a Lincoln convertible. The car driven
by the police was red. That color does not suit her. She consists of
three letters. Coherence, on the other hand, has important role
for creating unity between or among the propositional units in the
text. Without coherence, a set of utterances cannot form a text,
no matter, how many cohesive ties appear between the
utterances. To show a text with no cohesive ties, but perfectly
coherent, Widdowson (1978) presents following example (as cited
in Yule 2008, p 127):
7 A: That’s the telephone. B: I’m in bath. However, in spite of
the fact is that the importance of cohesion, in contrast to
coherence, may have been criticized; many researchers (such as
Hasan, 1984, Tanskanen, 2006, Hover, 1997) view that the
contribution of cohesion to unity cannot be challenged.
Tanskanen (2006) claims that although coherence without
cohesion might be possible, it may actually be quite uncommon
to find a coherent text having no cohesive links in real language
data. Hasan (1984) insists, “The perceived coherence depends
upon the interaction of cohesive devices called cohesive
harmony; the denser the cohesive harmony of a text, the more
coherent it will be judged” (as cited in Tanskanen, 2006, p 20).
The role of cohesive ties in a text is that they predispose the
readers to find the coherence, and ultimately to interpret the
message. As Tanskanen (2006) states, cohesion and coherence
are independent, but are intertwined so as to create more
comprehensible texts.
Definition of the terms Cohesion and Coherence
Cohesion refers to the many ways (grammatical, lexical,
semantic, metrical, alliterative) in which the elements of a text
are linked together. Cohesion differs from coherence in that a text
can be internally cohesive but be incoherent – that is, make no
sense.

Here is a text that is grammatically and lexically cohesive, but not

very coherent: An octopus is an air-filled curtain with seven heads
and three spike-filled fingers, which poke in frills and furls at
ribbon-strewed buttons.

Grammatical cohesion:
The clause-structure is in conformity with normal English
grammatical rules (which is itself a form of cohesion):

Anaphoric reference:
which poke refers back to the fingers

Lexical cohesion - semantic fields:

heads, fingers (body parts)

curtain, frills, furls, ribbons, buttons (haberdashery)

However the text only makes sense if we invent some kind of

other-world context. Notice how our tendency is to want to make
sense of it, to find some kind of science-fictional or poetical
circumstance whereby it could make sense.

Coherence:
By contrast, texts can be coherent when not cohesive:

Speaker 1: “Chocolate biscuits!”

Speaker 2: “Me! Me!”
Speaker 3: “Uh uh. Lent.”
Readers who know that people give up things like chocolate for
Lent can infer that Speaker 3 is refusing the biscuit on offer whilst
Speaker 2 is enthusiastically asking for one. But nothing
grammatical or lexical groups chocolate biscuits with me with
Lent, rather it is the reader’s real-world (or exophoric) knowledge
that enables interpretation.

Cohesion is objectively identifiable; coherence is far more

subjective, depending on the reader/listener’s interpretation.

Demonstration of Cohesion in action

Consider the cohesion and coherence in the following dialogue:

1.‘I’m thinking of getting married,’ Matthew said.

2.‘Oh, are you? Who to?’

3.‘I haven’t anyone in mind,’ Matthew said. ‘Only my brother-in-

law thinks I should get married. My sister wants me to get married
and so does my uncle. Every time I go home to Ireland my
mother’s ashamed that I’m not married to a girl.’

4.‘I got a young woman into trouble at the age of eighteen,’

Walter said. ‘Daughter of one of our footmen. He was an Irish
fellow. The butler caught him reading Nietzsche in the pantry. To
the detriment of the silver. Of course there was no question of my
marrying his daughter. The family made a settlement and I went
abroad to paint. My hair turned white at the age of nineteen.’

5.Matthew said, ‘I know a girl who’s expecting a baby by an old

spiritualist. She’s lovely. She’s got long black hair.’ He saddened
into silence and gazed upon the girl in jeans dispassionately,
recognizing her as Ronald’s former girl-friend.

6.‘I went abroad to paint, but my cousin the Marquise –’

7.‘I’ll tell you this much,’ Matthew said, ‘there’s no justification for
being a bachelor and that’s the truth, let’s face it. It’s everyone’s
duty to be fruitful and multiply according to his calling either
spiritual or temporal, as the case may be.’

8.‘Monet admired my work. Just before he died he visited my

studio with his friends, and –’

9.‘These are the figures,’ Matthew said, and took from inside his
coat a bundle of papers from which he selected one which had
been folded in four, and which was split and grubby at the folds.
He straightened out the sheet, following the typewritten lines with
his finger, as he read out, ‘Greater London, the census of 1951.
Unmarried males of twenty-one and over: six hundred and fifty-
nine thousand five hundred. That’s including divorced and
widowed, of course, but the majority are bachelors –’

10.‘I can see him now,’ said Walter, ‘as he was when he was
assisted into a chair before my easel. Monet was silent for fully
ten minutes – the painting was a simple, but rather exquisite roof-
top scene –’

11.‘Unmarried males of thirty and over,’ said Matthew: ‘three

hundred and fifty-eight thousand one hundred. Since 1951 the
bachelor population has increased by –’

12.‘Put that vulgar little bit of paper away,’ Walter said.

Analysis of lexical cohesion

Matthew begins with an observation about marriage. Walter
answers anaphorically in paragraph 2. In paragraph 3 Matthew
continues the cohesion by repeating the lexeme marriage. (A
lexeme encompasses all the derived forms, so the lexeme
marriage contains marry, married, marrying, marriageable, etc.)
In paragraph 4, Walter uses the euphemism got a young woman
into trouble for ‘got pregnant’, which is in the same semantic field
as marriage (in the wider context of the novel, it will transpire
that Walter is a fantasist), and goes on to link this to the lexeme
paint. Matthew provides cohesion with marriage with expecting a
baby in paragraph 5. In paragraph 6 Matthew and Walter begin to
diverge: Walter continues with the lexeme paint. In paragraph 7
Matthew continues with pregnancy in be fruitful and multiply. In
paragraph 8, Walter is cohesive with paragraphs 4 and 6 with the
words Monet and studio. In paragraph 9, Matthew is cohesive with
paragraphs 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, with the lexemes unmarried, divorced,
widowed, bachelors. In paragraph 10 Walter ignores this and
continues with his own cohesion with paragraphs 4, 6, and 8 with
the lexemes him (referring anaphorically to Monet), easel, Monet,
painting, scene. In paragraph 11, Matthew continues with
lexemes unmarried, bachelor, and in paragraph 12 Walter finally
returns to Matthew with the word paper, referring anaphorically
back to the census of paragraph 9. At no point does Matthew
enter into Walter’s reverie about having been an aristocratic
painter. There are some more local lexical cohesions: the
repetition of hair in paragraphs 4 and 5; footmen, butler, pantry,
silver, Marquise and family, cousin in 4 and 6; the number
sequences in paragraphs 9 and 11.

Both Matthew and Walter are preoccupied with their own

concerns and only pay half attention to the other. Their individual
texts are cohesive, but their joint discourse in the sequence
paragraphs 6-11 is not. These characters are interacting, but not
fully.
Literary Exercise
The following dialogue is extracted from Caryl Churchill’s play Top
Girls. Churchill uses the following notation system:

when one character starts speaking before the other has

finished, the point of interruption is marked /

when a speech follows on from a speech earlier than the one

immediately before it, continuity is marked *

Read the following dialogue, looking out for various kinds of

cohesion.

[They laugh. They look at menus.]

1. ISABELLA Yes, I forgot all my Latin. But my father was the

mainspring of my life and when he died I was so grieved. I’ll have
the chicken, please, / and the soup.
2. NIJO Of course you were grieved. My father was saying his
prayers and he dozed off in the sun. So I touched his knee to
rouse him. ‘I wonder what will happen,’ he said, and then he was
dead before he finished the sentence. / If he’d died saying
3. MARLENE What a shock.
4. NIJO his prayers he would have gone straight to heaven. /
Waldorf salad.

5. JOAN Death is the return of all creatures to God.

6. NIJO I shouldn’t have woken him.
7. JOAN Damnation only means ignorance of the truth. I was
always attracted by the teachings of John the Scot, though he was
inclined to confuse / God and the world.
8. ISABELLA Grief always overwhelmed me at the time.
9. MARLENE What I fancy is a rare steak. Gret?
10. ISABELLA I am of course a member of the / Church of
England*
11. GRET Potatoes.
12. MARLENE *I haven’t been to church for years. / I like
Christmas carols.
13. ISABELLA Good works matter more than church attendance.
14. MARLENE Make that two steaks and a lot of potatoes. Rare.
But I don’t do good works either.
15. JOAN Canelloni, please, / and a salad.
16. ISABELLA Well, I tried, but oh dear. Hennie did good works.
17. NIJO The first half of my life was all sin and the second / all
repentance*
18. MARLENE Oh what about starters?
19. GRET Soup.
20. JOAN *And which did you like best?
21. MARLENE Were your travels just a penance? Avocado
vinaigrette. Didn’t you / enjoy yourself?
22. JOAN Nothing to start with for me, thank you.
23. NIJO Yes, but I was very unhappy. / It hurt to remember
24. MARLENE And the wine list.
25. NIJO the past. I think that was repentance.

Caryl Churchill, 1982 Top Girls

Comment on cohesion in the dialogue, and its effect. Write your
answer below:

Enter your answer here...

Kent Youth Theatre’s production of Top Girls.

Here is an amateur production of Top Girls; the stretch of dialogue

occurs at 6.58-8.20.
Teaching Point
Dialogue is a staple of literature, but it is unlike real speech and
has evolved stage conventions of its own, including discrete turn-
taking. There need not be cohesion (although there usually is),
but the audience has to be able to interpret the dialogue
coherently, if it is to function as such.

Cohesion: Cohesion, like other semantic relations such as

synonymy, antonymy, polysemy, is the relationship of meaning of
one item with another item/s in the text or discourse. According to
Halliday and Hasan (1976), “Cohesion refers to the relations of
meaning that exist within the text, and is expressed through the
stratal organization of the text… It occurs where the
interpretation of some elements in the text is dependent on that
of another” ( p 4). Taboada (2004) defines cohesion as ‘the
internal hanging together of the text’. To Yule (2008) ‘Cohesion is
the tie and connection that exist within the text’. It is the part of
the system of a language; a type of intra-sentence relation of an
item with either the preceding or following item/s in the text. In
communication process, cohesion gives insights into how the
writer structures what he/she wants to convey. Halliday and
Hasan (1976) view that cohesion is expressed partly through the
grammar and partly through the vocabulary in the text. It is
therefore, there can be two types of cohesion: grammatical
cohesion, and lexical cohesion. Grammatical cohesion is the
cohesive tie that is expressed through the grammatical system of
a language such as reference, substitution, ellipsis, and
conjunction. Followings are the illustrative examples that show
the cohesive tie in italics in each: (i) Wow, how beautiful flower
vessel! How much does it cost? [reference]
5 (ii) You are going to attend the party? If so, what about these
agenda? [substitution] (iii) We can buy those apples if we need to
(buy those apples). [ellipsis] (iv) He passed the exam. However,
he did not obtain A plus. [conjunction] Lexical cohesion, on the
other hand, is ‘the cohesive effect achieved by the selection
of vocabulary’ (Halliday & Hasan, 1976, p 274). Lexical cohesion
can be realized in reiteration (using the same, or semantically
related vocabulary such as repetition, synonym, superordinate,
general word) and in collocation (co-occurrence of lexical items).
Followings are the examples showing cohesive tie in italics. (i)
Reiteration: I have a puppy. The puppy is black. [Repetition] I
have a puppy. The pup is black. [Synonym] I have a puppy. The
animal is black. [Superordinate] I have a puppy. The baby dog is
black. [General word] (ii) Collocation: With their hammer-nail
relation, the boys won the match. 2.2 Coherence: A text is
formed not only with the structured string of words, but also
with the contextual occurrence of the sentences. Coherence,
generally, is the contextual appearance of the utterances in the
text. More specifically, it is the contextual fitness of in the
text that contributes in understanding the meaning or message.
According to Taboada (2004), “Coherence is the hanging together
of the text with relation to its context of situation or culture” (p.
158). Yule (2008) views, “Coherence is everything fitting together
well, and it is not something that exists in words or structures, but
something that exists in people” (p 126). Coherence is the result
of the interpretation of the meaning of the text, and it depends
on the relation between the audience and the text
6 (Tanskanen, 2006). It is therefore, the coherence of a text can
be perceived only if the receiver’s background knowledge is
sufficient enough to interpret the linkage of messages in the
discourse. The examples below show the coherent, and non-
coherent texts: (i) A text with coherence: A: Did you bring the
car? B: Yes, I brought it yesterday. (ii) A text with no coherence:
A: Where did you go last week? B: That sounds good. My brother
paints it. 2.3 Coherence and cohesion for communication: We
have discussed that cohesion is the intra-text connectedness of
the items, and coherence is the appropriateness of the contextual
occurrence of the text so as to make the sense of the message
conveyed. In cohesion, the surface elements appear
connectedly, whereas in coherence, the elements of knowledge
or sense appear to form conceptual connectivity. Some
researchers such as Morgan and Sellner (1980), Carrell (1982)
claim that cohesion is not sufficient enough to make a text
connected or appear a unified whole. It is because a highly
cohesive text with lots of connections and ties may cause
difficulty in the interpretation of the message as Yule (2008, p
126) presents the following example: My father bought a Lincoln
convertible. The car driven by the police was red. That color does
not suit her. She consists of three letters. Coherence, on the
other hand, has important role for creating unity between or
among the propositional units in the text. Without coherence, a
set of utterances cannot form a text, no matter, how many
cohesive ties appear between the utterances. To show a text with
no cohesive ties, but perfectly coherent, Widdowson (1978)
presents following example (as cited in Yule 2008, p 127):
7 A: That’s the telephone. B: I’m in bath. However, in spite of
the fact is that the importance of cohesion, in contrast to
coherence, may have been criticized; many researchers (such as
Hasan, 1984, Tanskanen, 2006, Hover, 1997) view that the
contribution of cohesion to unity cannot be challenged.
Tanskanen (2006) claims that although coherence without
cohesion might be possible, it may actually be quite uncommon
to find a coherent text having no cohesive links in real language
data. Hasan (1984) insists, “The perceived coherence depends
upon the interaction of cohesive devices called cohesive
harmony; the denser the cohesive harmony of a text, the more
coherent it will be judged” (as cited in Tanskanen, 2006, p 20).
The role of cohesive ties in a text is that they predispose the
readers to find the coherence, and ultimately to interpret the
message. As Tanskanen (2006) states, cohesion and coherence
are independent, but are intertwined so as to create more
comprehensible texts.
Cohesion: Cohesion, like other semantic relations such as
synonymy, antonymy, polysemy, is the relationship of meaning of
one item with another item/s in the text or discourse. According to
Halliday and Hasan (1976), “Cohesion refers to the relations of
meaning that exist within the text, and is expressed through the
stratal organization of the text… It occurs where the
interpretation of some elements in the text is dependent on that
of another” ( p 4). Taboada (2004) defines cohesion as ‘the
internal hanging together of the text’. To Yule (2008) ‘Cohesion is
the tie and connection that exist within the text’. It is the part of
the system of a language; a type of intra-sentence relation of an
item with either the preceding or following item/s in the text. In
communication process, cohesion gives insights into how the
writer structures what he/she wants to convey. Halliday and
Hasan (1976) view that cohesion is expressed partly through the
grammar and partly through the vocabulary in the text. It is
therefore, there can be two types of cohesion: grammatical
cohesion, and lexical cohesion. Grammatical cohesion is the
cohesive tie that is expressed through the grammatical system of
a language such as reference, substitution, ellipsis, and
conjunction. Followings are the illustrative examples that show
the cohesive tie in italics in each: (i) Wow, how beautiful flower
vessel! How much does it cost? [reference]
5 (ii) You are going to attend the party? If so, what about these
agenda? [substitution] (iii) We can buy those apples if we need to
(buy those apples). [ellipsis] (iv) He passed the exam. However,
he did not obtain A plus. [conjunction] Lexical cohesion, on the
other hand, is ‘the cohesive effect achieved by the selection
of vocabulary’ (Halliday & Hasan, 1976, p 274). Lexical cohesion
can be realized in reiteration (using the same, or semantically
related vocabulary such as repetition, synonym, superordinate,
general word) and in collocation (co-occurrence of lexical items).
Followings are the examples showing cohesive tie in italics. (i)
Reiteration: I have a puppy. The puppy is black. [Repetition] I
have a puppy. The pup is black. [Synonym] I have a puppy. The
animal is black. [Superordinate] I have a puppy. The baby dog is
black. [General word] (ii) Collocation: With their hammer-nail
relation, the boys won the match. 2.2 Coherence: A text is
formed not only with the structured string of words, but also
with the contextual occurrence of the sentences. Coherence,
generally, is the contextual appearance of the utterances in the
text. More specifically, it is the contextual fitness of in the
text that contributes in understanding the meaning or message.
According to Taboada (2004), “Coherence is the hanging together
of the text with relation to its context of situation or culture” (p.
158). Yule (2008) views, “Coherence is everything fitting together
well, and it is not something that exists in words or structures, but
something that exists in people” (p 126). Coherence is the result
of the interpretation of the meaning of the text, and it depends
on the relation between the audience and the text
6 (Tanskanen, 2006). It is therefore, the coherence of a text can
be perceived only if the receiver’s background knowledge is
sufficient enough to interpret the linkage of messages in the
discourse. The examples below show the coherent, and non-
coherent texts: (i) A text with coherence: A: Did you bring the
car? B: Yes, I brought it yesterday. (ii) A text with no coherence:
A: Where did you go last week? B: That sounds good. My brother
paints it. 2.3 Coherence and cohesion for communication: We
have discussed that cohesion is the intra-text connectedness of
the items, and coherence is the appropriateness of the contextual
occurrence of the text so as to make the sense of the message
conveyed. In cohesion, the surface elements appear
connectedly, whereas in coherence, the elements of knowledge
or sense appear to form conceptual connectivity. Some
researchers such as Morgan and Sellner (1980), Carrell (1982)
claim that cohesion is not sufficient enough to make a text
connected or appear a unified whole. It is because a highly
cohesive text with lots of connections and ties may cause
difficulty in the interpretation of the message as Yule (2008, p
126) presents the following example: My father bought a Lincoln
convertible. The car driven by the police was red. That color does
not suit her. She consists of three letters. Coherence, on the
other hand, has important role for creating unity between or
among the propositional units in the text. Without coherence, a
set of utterances cannot form a text, no matter, how many
cohesive ties appear between the utterances. To show a text with
no cohesive ties, but perfectly coherent, Widdowson (1978)
presents following example (as cited in Yule 2008, p 127):
7 A: That’s the telephone. B: I’m in bath. However, in spite of
the fact is that the importance of cohesion, in contrast to
coherence, may have been criticized; many researchers (such as
Hasan, 1984, Tanskanen, 2006, Hover, 1997) view that the
contribution of cohesion to unity cannot be challenged.
Tanskanen (2006) claims that although coherence without
cohesion might be possible, it may actually be quite uncommon
to find a coherent text having no cohesive links in real language
data. Hasan (1984) insists, “The perceived coherence depends
upon the interaction of cohesive devices called cohesive
harmony; the denser the cohesive harmony of a text, the more
coherent it will be judged” (as cited in Tanskanen, 2006, p 20).
The role of cohesive ties in a text is that they predispose the
readers to find the coherence, and ultimately to interpret the
message. As Tanskanen (2006) states, cohesion and coherence
are independent, but are intertwined so as to create more
comprehensible texts.