AN ANALYSIS OF COHESIVE DEVICE IN THE ARTICLES "DEPRESSION

AMONG UNIVERSITY STUDENTS"

Az-zahrah
1808103012
IAIN Syekh Nurjati Cirebon
asadjaki2000@gmail.com

ABSTRACT

The purpose of this study is to find out the types of cohesive devices appeared in the
article entitled "Depression among Students" by (Ranizal, Zabidi, Shariff, Stanis, & Amir,
2019). The descriptive qualitative research method was used in this study. The researcher
took data from the article entitled "Depression among Students" by (Ranizal, Zabidi, Shariff,
Stanis, & Amir, 2019) of e-Journal of Media & Society (e-JOMS). The cohesive device is the
most important in writing. Because if there is no cohesive device as a bond to connect word
to word, words become sentences without cohesion and texts may become nothing. There are
four types of the cohesive devices found in the article entitled “Depression among University
Students” by (Ranizal et al., 2019), including Reference (3 Exophoric, 2 Anaphoric, and 1
Cataphoric), Ellipsis (1 Nominal and 1 Verbal), Conjunction (37 Additive, 1 Adversative, and
3 Causal), and Lexical cohesion (1 Repetition and 1 Collocation).

Keywords: Cohesive devices, grammatical devices, lexical devices.

INTRODUCTION

Humans use language as their primary means of communication. Language used by

people everywhere in the world. Language can be defined as a means of communication that
people use on a daily basis to communicate with one another. As a means of communication,
there are two types of language: spoken language and written language. Spoken language can
be in the form of conversation, dialogue and speech. Written language is reflected in forms of
articles, short story, magazine, newspaper, novel, etc.

Cohesion is a unit that existsin text and relates the meaning of words. Text said in
cohesively written if the sentences consist of cohesive devices. Halliday and Hasan (1976) as
cited in (Khoirunnisa, Jufrizal, & Marlina, 2018) classified five types of cohesive devices,
they are substitution, ellipsis, reference, conjunction and lexical cohesion. Every writer has
the different ways in conduct cohesive devices in text. It‟s depend on author‟s knowledge and
experience. The ability to conducting cohesive devices in sentence is the important element to
create an article. There is no grammatical and lexical cohesion without cohesive devices.
Cohesion occurs where the interpretation of some element in discourse depends on another.

. As a result, cohesive devices are the most important in writing. Since there is no
relation between one sentence to another sentence there is no idea from the text or sentence
itself. A word may have a relation with another word to become a sentence. The sentence
may have a relation with the other to become a text. If there were no cohesive devices as ties
to relate words to words, words become to become sentences there was no cohesion and text
may become nothing. There is a research questions formulated in this research, the question
is “what types of cohesive devices are appeared in the article “Depression among University
Students”?”. The objectives of this research is to find out the types of cohesive devices
appeared in the article “Depression among University Students” by (Ranizal et al., 2019). To
answer the research questions, this research employs theory of cohesive devices proposed by
Halliday and Hasan (1976) as cited in (Bahaziq, 2016) to analyze the data.

LITERATURE REVIEW

Cohesive Devices

Cohesion is the semantic relation between one element and another in a text (Halliday
& Hasan, 1976) as cited in (Bahaziq, 2016). A text is cohesive when the elements are tied
together and considered meaningful to the reader. Cohesion occurs when the interpretation of
one item depends on the other, i.e. one item presupposes the. For instance in the following
text:

Amy went to the party. She sat with Sara.

 The interpretation of the item she depends on the lexical item Amy. Therefore, the
text is considered cohesive because we cannot understand the meaning of she unless Amy
exists in the text. Cohesion is not only concerned with grammar, but also with vocabulary.
Hence, it is divided into grammatical and lexical cohesion.

Grammatical Devices

Halliday and Hasan classify the categories of grammatical cohesion into four types:
reference, substitution, ellipsis, and conjunction.

Reference

Reference can be identified as the situation in which one element cannot be

semantically interpreted unless it is referred to another element in the text. Pronouns, articles,
demonstratives, and comparatives are used as referring devices to refer to items in linguistic
or situational texts. Reference may either be exophoric or endophoric (Bloor & Bloor, 2013)
as cited in (Bahaziq, 2016).

 Exophoric reference requires the reader to infer the interpreted referent by looking
beyond the text in the immediate environment shared by the reader and writer. For
example in the sentence:

That is a wonderful idea!

 To retrieve the meaning of that, the reader must look outside the situation. On the
other hand, endophoric reference lies within the text itself. It is classified into two
classes: anaphoric and cataphoric. According to Paltridge (2012) as cited in (Bahaziq,
2016), “Anaphoric reference is where a word or phrase refers back to another word or
phrase used earlier in the text” (p. 115). In the previous example:

Amy went to the party. She sat with Sara.

She refers back to Amy; therefore, she is an anaphoric reference. Cataphoric reference
looks forward to another word or phrase mentioned later in the text. For instance in
the following sentence, he is a cataphoric reference that looks forward to Mike. As
soon as he arrived, Mike visited his parents.
Substitution

Substitution occurs when an item is replaced by another item in the text to avoid
repetition. The difference between substitution and reference is that substitution lies in the
relation between words, whereas reference between meanings. There are three types of
substitution: nominal, verbal, and clausal.

 Nominal substitution is substituting a noun or a nominal group with another noun.

Elements of this type are one, ones, and same. In the following example, one
substitutes car.

This car is old. I will buy a new one.

 Verbal substitution involves substituting a verb or a verbal group with another verb.
The verb element used to replace items in this type is do. For example:

I challenge you to win the game before I do!

Here, do is the substitution for win the game.

 Clausal substitution is substituting clauses by so or not. This is illustrated by the

following:

A: Do you think the teacher is going to be absent tomorrow?

B: No. I don‟t think so.

In this example, so substitutes the clause going to be absent.

Ellipsis

Ellipsis is the process of omitting an unnecessary item, which has been mentioned
earlier in a text, and replacing it with nothing. It is similar to substitution because “Ellipsis is
simply substitution by zero” (Halliday & Hasan, 1976) as cited in (Bahaziq, 2016). Normally,
it is considered as an anaphoric relation because the omission takes place within a text. When
ellipsis occurs, the item that is omitted from the structure of the text, can still be understood.
Alike substitution, ellipsis has three types: nominal, verbal, and clausal.

1. In nominal ellipsis, the noun is omitted. This is exemplified by:

 My brothers like sports. In fact, both [0] love football. [0: My brothers]

In the second sentence, the nominal my brothers is omitted.

2. Verbal ellipsis involves the omission of the verb. In the following example, the verb
been studying is left out in B.

A: Have you been studying?

B: Yes, I have[0]. [0: been studying]

3. Clausal ellipsis occurs when the clause is omitted. In the example mentioned below,
the clause writing on the board is excluded in B.

A: Who is writing on the board?

B: Alice is [0]. [0: writing on the board]

Conjunction

Conjunction words are linking devices between sentences or clauses in a text. Unlike
the other grammatical devices, conjunctions express the „logical-semantic‟ relation between
sentences rather than between words and structures (Halliday & Hasan, 1976) as cited in
(Bahaziq, 2016). In other words, they structure the text in a certain logical order that is
meaningful to the reader or listener. Conjunctions are divided into four types, namely
additive, adversative, causal, and temporal.

 Additive conjunctions connect units that share semantic similarity. Examples of

additive conjunctions are, and, likewise, furthermore, in addition, etc.
 Adversative conjunctions are used to express contrasting results or opinions. This type
of conjunction is expressed by words such as, but, however, in contrast, whereas, etc.
 Causal conjunctions introduce results, reasons, or purposes. They are characterized by
the use of items such as, so, thus, therefore, because, etc. Temporal conjunctions
express the time order of events such as, finally, then, soon, at the same time, etc.
Lexical Devices

Lexical cohesion involves the choice of vocabulary. It is concerned with the

relationship that exists between lexical items in a text such as words and phrases. Lexical
cohesion includes two types, reiteration and collocation.

Reiteration

Halliday and Hasan (1976) as cited in (Bahaziq, 2016) define reiteration as two items that
share the same referent and could either be repeated or have similar meanings in a text. The
forms of reiteration are repetition, synonymy, antonymy, and superordination (hyponymy and
meronymy).

Repetition

Repetition is the restatement of the same lexical item. This is illustrated by the following:
Anna ate the apple. The apple was fresh.

Synonymy

Synonymy is used to refer to items of similar meaning just as, attractive and beautiful.

Antonymy

Antonymy is the relation between items of opposite meanings such as, hot and cold.

Hyponymy

Hyponymy refers to items of „general-specific‟ or „an example of‟ relationship (Paltridge,

2012: 119) as cited in (Bahaziq, 2016). For example, vehicle is the co-hyponym of car.

Meronymy

Meronymy is a „whole-part‟ relationship between items. For instance, cover and page are co-
meronyms of the item book. In other words, book is the superordinate item of cover and
page.

Collocation
Collocation is a combination of vocabulary items that co-occur together. It includes
combinations of adjectives and nouns such as, „fast food‟, verbs and nouns such as, „run out
of money‟, and other items such as, „men‟ and „women‟ (Platridge, 2012) as cited in
(Bahaziq, 2016).

METHODOLOGY

The methodology adopted for this study is a qualitative descriptive method.

According to (Creswell, 2012), qualitative research is a method for investigating and
comprehending the meaning that individuals or groups ascribe to a social human problem. A
descriptive method is a method for examining the current state of a group of humans, an
object, condition, system of thought, or event. This type of study seeks to explain specific
social phenomena. As a research method, the qualitative descriptive method was used in this
study. This study used the qualitative descriptive method to identify the types of cohesive
devices appeared in the article “Depression among University Students”. The primary data of
this paper were the article entitled “Depression among University Students”. There were
some steps in collecting the data: The first, First, the researcher looked for articles on the
internet. Second, the researcher took the data text about Social Factors Associated with
Depression among University Students in the article entitled “Depression among University
Students”. After reading the script of the conversation, the researcher analyze the data.

DATA ANALYSIS

In this part, the researcher analyze the text about Social Factors Associated with
Depression among University Students in the article entitled “Depression among University
Students” by (Ranizal et al., 2019). This part discussed about the types of cohesive devices
found in the data. The researcher analyzed the data by using the theory of Halliday and Hasan
(1976). Based on the data analysis, the researcher found all types of cohesive devices in the
article entitled “Depression among University Students” by (Ranizal et al., 2019). The
researcher found four types of Cohesive Devices that appeared in this article there are
Reference, Ellipsis, Conjunction, and Lexical cohesion. First there are three types of
reference that appeared in this article they are 3 exophoric, 2 anaphoric, and 1 cataphoric
reference. The second is ellipsis, the type of ellipsis were found in this article are 1 nominal
and 1 verbal, while clausal do not found. The third is conjunction with the most appeared is
additive conjunction. there are 37 additive, 1 adversative, and 3 causal conjunction, while
temporal do not found. Forth is lexical cohesion. There are two types appeared 1 Repetition
and 1 Collocation. More explanation will be explains below.

Table of the types of cohesive devices that appeared in the article entitled “Depression
among University Students” by (Ranizal et al., 2019)

Types of Cohesive devices Appearances Total Appearances

Reference
- Exophoric - 3
- Anaphoric - 2 6
- Cataphoric - 1

Ellipsis
- Nominal - 1
- Verbal - 1 2
- Clausal - 0

Conjunction
- Additive - 37
- Adversative - 1 41
- Causal - 3
- Temporal - 0

Lexical cohesion
- Reiteration (Repetition) - 1 2
- Collocation - 1

Reference

Types of reference appear in this article are exophoric reference with total
appearances 3, anaphoric reference total appearances are 2 and cataphoric reference total
appearance 1. The exophoric reference are appeared in the sentence:

- The central problems of university students in Malaysia would be financial. (p. 5, line
1)
 - The study also showed that students from poor, not well off family background are
more likely to be at risk of depression because they have no money to pay for course
fee, examination fee etc. (p. 5, line 3)
- The Malays and those from a low income family were found to experience higher
stress compared to others. (p. 5, line 13)

The article the is mostly used as an exophoric reference in this article. This is evident
in most paragraphs such as, the central problems (p. 5, line 1), the study (p. 5, line 3), and the
Malays (p. 5, line 13).

The anaphoric reference are appeared in the sentence:

- University students are the group of people who are easily to get depression. They
need to adjust to the different environment and variation of social background; in
addition, they have to struggle for academic achievement and social requirement in
preparing their future careers. (p. 3, line 22)
- The reason on why the behaviourist did so is not because they were not aware of these
internal feelings and thoughts, but because they thought them relatively irrelevant to
the process of influencing behavior, and too difficult to measure with any accuracy.
(p. 6, line 1)

Anaphoric reference is where a word or phrase refers back to another word or phrase used
earlier in the text. In the first sentence above, they refers back to University students;
therefore, they is an anaphoric reference. Same as in the first sentence, they in second
sentence above, is an anaphoric reference. They refers back to the behaviourist.

The cataphoric reference are appeared in the sentence:

- Sometimes, they have to be someone else in order to be accepted by their new spouse
and blend in with people that they are not comfortable with so that they would not feel
left out. Due to that, university students experience depression by their own friends.
(p. 4, line 6)

Cataphoric reference looks forward to another word or phrase mentioned later in the text.
In the following sentence above, they is a cataphoric reference that looks forward to
university students.

Substitution
 From the analysis of the data, there were no substitutions in the article entitled
“Depression among University Students” by (Ranizal et al., 2019). It is supported the theory
of Halliday and Hasan about the using of substitution is used more in speech and
conversation.

Ellipsis

Ellipsis is the process of omitting an unnecessary item, which has been mentioned
earlier in a text, and replacing it with nothing. Ellipsis is simply substitution by zero. From
the table of the types of cohesive devices that appeared in the article, it can be seen that there
are 2 types of ellipsis appeared in the article. There are 1 nominal and 1 verbal ellipsis. The
types of ellipsis appear in the two following sentence below:

(Verbal)

- Students have to adapt and [0] [0: have to] make new friends. (p. 4, line 13)

Verbal ellipsis involves the omission of the verb. In the sentence above, the verb have
to is left out in second sentence to avoid repetition.

(Nominal)

- The study also showed that students from poor, [0] [0: Students] not well off family
background are more likely to be at risk of depression because they have no money to
pay for course fee, examination fee etc. (p. 5, line 3)

In nominal ellipsis, the noun is omitted. The sentence above contained the omitted of
the nominal group that is the word “students”. In the first phrase of the sentence above, the
nominal group “students” used before adjective “from poor”. In the second sentence contains
only a word adjective, complement and there was omitted the noun, that presupposed item is
students, but in this sentence substituted by zero.

Conjunction
Conjunctions are dominant in this article. The author uses three types of conjunctions:
additive, adversative, and causal. There are no cases of temporal conjunctions in this article.
The most dominant additive conjunctions used in this article is „and‟. There are 37 additive
conjunction „and‟ in this article. For example in the sentence:
 - On the other hands, the negative association between social problems and depression
was found in the current study . (p. 4, line 9)

The additive conjunction merely adds one statement to another. It doesn‟t express ideas
such as contrast, choice or inference. The additive conjunction „and‟ in the sentence above is
used to add one statement. The additive conjunction „furthermore‟ and „in addition‟ also
appeared in this article.

- Furthermore, a previous study conducted on students in Malaysia found the students

to screen positive for depression among those with current financial struggles.
University students who are originated from rural areas were reported to score higher
depression and anxiety compared to students with an urban background. (p. 5, line 7)
- Furthermore, emotional and mental stresses also can influence the individual to
engage in alcohol consumption (Weitzman, 2004) and also self-injuries behaviours
(Serras, 2010). (p. 5, line 17)
- In addition, according to Shamsudin et.al (2013) wrote in his study that the Malays
and those from a low income family were found to experience higher stress compared
to others. (p. 5, line 12)

Moreover, there is adversative conjunction „but‟ in the sentence “Traditionally,

behaviorists did not focus too much on people's thoughts, perceptions, evaluations or
expectations but behaviourist focused solely on their external and directly observable and
measurable behavior.” (p. 28, line 15) is used to show contrasting ideas. There are also
appear causal conjunctions in this articles such as, therefore (p. 2, line 20), because (p. 1, line
15), and as a result (p. 6, line 7) to introduce results.

Lexical cohesion
There are two types of lexical cohesion that appear in the article "Depression among
University Students" by (Ranizal et al., 2019) and there are three sentences that contain
lexical cohesion consisting of repetition and collocation.
- Increasing trend found for the commonness of depression among university
students as well as in society. In a recent review, the commonness of
depression among university students was reported to be higher than the
general population. (p. 2, line 10)
 - Depression is a huge critical psychological concern worldwide because of high
prevalence rates, the chronic nature of the condition and difficult treatment
and recovery. (p. 1, line 15)

Repetition is the repeated words or word phrase composing to the text. In the first
sentence above, the phrase „the commonness of depression among university students‟ is
repeated in the second sentence. Furthermore, collocation describes associations between
vocabulary items, such as combination of adjectives and noun, as in worldwide and the
chronic nature in the second sentence above. „Worldwide‟ and „the chronic nature‟ is
collocation because they are a combination of adjective and noun.

CONCLUSION

Cohesive devices are the most important in writing. If there was no cohesive devices
as ties to relate words to words, words become to become sentence there was no cohesion and
text may become nothing. In this study the researcher used the theory of cohesive devices in
analyzing the article entitled “Depression among University Students” by (Ranizal et al.,
2019). From the discussion, it can be conclude that there are four types of the cohesive devices
found in the article entitled “Depression among University Students” by (Ranizal et al., 2019).
They are: Reference (3 Exophoric, 2 Anaphoric, and 1 Cataphoric), Ellipsis (1 Nominal and 1
Verbal), Conjunction (37 Additive, 1 Adversative, and 3 Causal), and Lexical cohesion (1
Repetition and 1 Collocation). There must be something less in some parts of this study, which
can be found by readers while reading this article. However, the researcher hopes this article
will make a students study more about cohesive devices, because it was the important thing in
writing. Students have to understand the using of cohesive devices types in order to make their
witing cohesively written.

REFERENCE

Bahaziq, A. (2016). Cohesive Devices in Written Discourse: A Discourse Analysis of a

Student‟s Essay Writing. Canadian Center of Science and Education, 112-119.

Bloor, T., & Bloor, M. (2013). The Functional Analysis of English: A Hallidayan Approach
(3rd ed.). London: Routledge.

Creswell, J. W. (2012). Educational research: Planning, conducting, and evaluating

quantitative and qualitative research. Boston: Pearson.
 Halliday, M. A., & Hasan, R. (1976). Cohesion in English. London: Longman.

Khoirunnisa, N., Jufrizal, & Marlina, L. (2018). AN ANALYSIS OF COHESIVE DEVICES

IN HIRATA‟S “THE RAINBOW TROOPS” NOVEL. E-Journal of English
Language & Literature, 107.

Ranizal, M. A., Zabidi, W. Q., Shariff, S. A., Stanis, J., & Amir, S. A. (2019). Depression
Among University Students. e-Journal of Media & Society (e-JOMS), 1-15.

APPENDIX

The link of articles “Depression among University Students"

https://drive.google.com/file/d/12l_h8sG1jLC9EB_fMLTpQNHlqgeMXmGJ/view?usp=drives
dk