Scribd
Upload
161 views

Grammatical Cohesion and Textuality

The document discusses grammatical cohesion and textuality. [1] Textuality refers to the features that make a text a coherent text, with the most important principle being cohesion. [2] Cohesion is the connection between elements in a text so the interpretation of one element depends on another. [3] There are different types of cohesion including reference, ellipsis and substitution, conjunction, and theme and rheme.

Uploaded by

Maya Muthalib
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
161 views

Grammatical Cohesion and Textuality

The document discusses grammatical cohesion and textuality. [1] Textuality refers to the features that make a text a coherent text, with the most important principle being cohesion. [2] Cohesion is the connection between elements in a text so the interpretation of one element depends on another. [3] There are different types of cohesion including reference, ellipsis and substitution, conjunction, and theme and rheme.

Uploaded by

Maya Muthalib
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
You are on page 1/ 5

GRAMMATICAL COHESION AND TEXTUALITY

Neubert and Shreve (as cited in Nordquist, 2019) define textuality as "the
complex set of features that texts must have to be considered texts. Textuality is a
property that a complex linguistic object assumes when it reflects certain social
and communicative constraints." The most important principle and criterion of
textuality is cohesion, which is the connection or the connectedness manifested
when the interpretation of one textual element (a word located in one sentence) is
dependent on another element in the text (a word usually but not necessarily in
another sentence). There are then some types of cohesion, some of which include
reference, ellipsis and substitution, conjunction, and also theme and rheme.

a. Reference

Reference is the relationship of one linguistic expression to another, in


which one provides the information necessary to interpret the other. In written
text, referencing indicates how the writer introduces participants and keeps track
of them throughout the text (Eggins in Hameed, 2008). There are then two kinds
of reference including cohesion reference and cohesive reference.

The cohesion reference functions to retrieve presupposed information in


text and must be identifiable for it to be considered as cohesive. This kind of
reference is then divided into two types namely Exophoric referencing (refers to
information from the immediate context of situation) and Endophoric referencing
(refers to information that can be “retrieved” from within the text). It is this
endophoric referencing which is the focus of cohesion theory, in which it is
divided into two types: Anaphoric (refers to previously mentioned information in
text) and Cataphoric (refers to information that will be presented later in the text).
For cohesion purposes, anaphoric referencing is the most relevant as it “provides a
link with a preceding portion of the text” (Halliday & Hasan in Hameed, 2008).

Additionally, the cohesive reference is divided into three different types:


personal (keeps track of function through the speech situation using noun
pronouns like “she, her” and possessive determiners like “mine, yours”),
demonstrative (keeps track of information through location using proximity
references like “this, there”) and comparative (keeps track of identity and
similarity through indirect references using adjectives like “similar, different” and
adverbs like “so, otherwise”. (ibid in Hameed, 2008).

Thus, it can be seen that reference plays a big role as a part of cohesion
since it can help readers to see how participants within a text are being introduced
and keeping tracked throughout the text by the writer.

b. Ellipsis and Substitution

According to Bloor and Bloor (in Hameed, 2008) substitution and ellipsis
is used when “a speaker or writer wishes to avoid the repetition of a lexical item
and is able to draw on one of the grammatical resources of the language to replace
the item.” Ellipsis means as the omission of word, phrase, or even a clause within
a sentence, in which the meaning of the sentence then can be understood by
looking at the contextual clues, while substitution is the word, phrase, or clause
within a sentence being replaced by another word, phrase, or clause. Both ellipsis
and substitution are then divided into three types of classification as follows:

 Nominal
- The nominal ellipsis operates in nominal group, which in this case the
word being omitted is the noun, e.g. “Ayana eats chocolate ice cream,
but I prefer the vanilla.” (Ice cream is a noun being omitted)
- The nominal substitution also operates in nominal group, in which the
most typical substitution words are “one and ones” that substitute
nouns, e.g. “This is my car and that one is yours.” (Car is a noun being
substituted)
 Verbal
- Like its name, the verbal ellipsis operates in verbal group, in which
the word being omitted is a verb, e.g. “Have you slept?”, “Yes, I have”
(Slept is a verb being omitted)
- The verbal substitution operates in verbal group as well, in which the
most common substitute is the verb “do”, e.g. “Hasan buys a new bag
and you do too.” (Buy is a verb being substituted)
 Clausal
- In clausal ellipsis, an entire clause is omitted, e.g. “Has the Semantic
class been dismissed?”, “Yes, it has.” (The semantic has been
dismissed is the clause being omitted)
- In clausal substitution, an entire clause is substituted and though it may
seem to be similar to either nominal or verbal substitution, the
difference is the presupposed anaphoric reference, e.g. “The doctor is
so friendly”, “I think so.” (The doctor is so friendly as the clause being
substituted)
c. Conjunction

Conjunction involves the use of formal markers to relate sentences,


clauses and paragraphs to each other. Conjunction then functions as signal for the
reader to relate what is about to be said to what has been said before by the writer.
Bloor and Bloor (in Hameed, 2008) described that conjunction acts as “cohesive
tie between clauses or sections of text in such a way as to demonstrate a
meaningful pattern between them”. As a semantic cohesive tie within text,
conjunction is then divided into four categories namely Additive conjunction
(structurally coordinate or link by adding to the presupposed item which signaled
through “and, additionally, etc.” and also negate the presupposed item and
signaled by “either, neither, etc.), Adversative conjunctions (indicate “contrary to
expectation” which signaled by “yet, in fact, etc.”), Causal conjunction (express
“result, reason and purpose” which signaled by “so, as a result, etc.”), and
Temporal conjunction (link by signaling sequence or times such as “then, at the
same time, etc.”).

It then can be seen that conjunction is the least directly identifiable relation
amongst the cohesion forming devices within text and this is in accordance with
the indication of Halliday and Hasan (in Hameed, 2008) that “conjunctive
relations are not tied to any particular sequence in the expression “ .

d. Theme and Rheme

Every sentence that consists of either one or more clauses has a theme and
a rheme. In their book, Brown and Yule (1983) noted that ‘theme’ is the starting
point of an utterance, while ‘rheme’ is everything else that follows the starting
point or the ‘theme’. Alternatively, Halliday (in Azzahra, 2010) stated that the
theme can be seen as the point of departure of the message.

Concentrating on the themes (or topics) of clauses does not tell us much
unless we also concentrate on the rest of the clause, which in this case known as
the rheme or comment of the clause. Thus, we see further patterns emerging when
we look at themes and rhemes together in connected text, as seen in this example:
“Andy, my little brother, really loves ice cream.” From the example, we can see
that ‘Andy, my little brother’ is the theme and ‘really loves ice cream’ is the
rheme, and we can only easily understand them when we look at them together,
not separately.
References

Azzahra, W. (2010). Grammatical Cohesion and Textuality. Retrieved from


https://www.scribd.com/doc/40293842/Grammatical-Cohesion-and-
Textuality

Brown. G. & Yule, G. (1983). Discourse Analysis (1 ed.). Cambridge University


Press.

Hameed, H. T. (2008). Cohesion in Texts: A Discourse Analysis of a News


Article in a Magazine. Al-Faith Journal, No. 37, 81-114.
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/328216143

Nordquist, R. (2019). What is textuality?. Retrieved from


https://www.thoughtco.com/textuality-definition-1692538

Reference. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://glossary.sil.org/term/reference

You might also like

pFad - Phonifier reborn

Pfad - The Proxy pFad of © 2024 Garber Painting. All rights reserved.

Note: This service is not intended for secure transactions such as banking, social media, email, or purchasing. Use at your own risk. We assume no liability whatsoever for broken pages.


Alternative Proxies:

Alternative Proxy

pFad Proxy

pFad v3 Proxy

pFad v4 Proxy