We know, for example, that texts must have a certain structure that depends on factors quite different from those required in the structure of a single sentence. Some of those factors are described in terms of cohesion, or the ties and connections that exist within texts. A number of those types of cohesive ties can be identified in the following paragraph.

My father once bought a Lincoln convertible. He did it by saving every penny he could. That car would be worth a fortune nowadays. However, he sold it to help pay for my college education. Sometimes I think I’d rather have the convertible.

There are connections present here in the use of words to maintain reference to the same people and things throughout: father – he – he – he; my – my – I; Lincoln – it. There are connections between phrases such as: a Lincoln convertible – that car – the convertible. There are more general connections created by a number of terms that share a common element of meaning, such as “money” (bought – saving – penny – worth a fortune – sold – pay) and “time” (once – nowadays – sometimes). There is also a connector (However) that marks the relationship of what follows to what went before. The verb tenses in the first four sentences are all in the past, creating a connection between those events, and a different time is indicated by the present tense of the final sentence.

Analysis of these cohesive ties within a text gives us some insight into how writers structure what they want to say. An appropriate number of cohesive ties may be a crucial factor in our judgments on whether something is well written or not. It has also been noted that the conventions of cohesive structure differ from one language to the next and may be one of the sources of difficulty encountered in translating texts.

However, by itself, cohesion would not be sufficient to enable us to make sense of what we read. It is quite easy to create a highly cohesive text that has a lot of connections between the sentences, but is very difficult to interpret. Note that the following text has connections such as Lincoln – the car, red – that color, her – she, letters – a letter, and so on.

My father bought a Lincoln convertible. The car driven by the police was red. That color doesn’t suit her. She consists of three letters. However, a letter isn’t as fast as a telephone call.

It becomes clear from this type of example that the “connectedness” we experience in our interpretation of normal texts is not simply based on connections between Discourse analysis 143 the words. There must be some other factor that leads us to distinguish connected texts that make sense from those that do not. This factor is usually described as “coherence.”

اخر الاخبار

اخبار العتبة العباسية المقدسة

وفد العتبة العباسية المقدسة يزور قضاء آمرلي ويشيد بجهود أهاليه في دعم الشعبين الإيراني واللبناني

قسم التطوير يقيم دورة عن أخلاقيات المهنة ضمن البرنامج التأهيلي لمنتسبي العتبة العباسية المقدسة الجدد

شعبة التوجيه الديني النسوي تحيي ذكرى ولادة الإمام الرضا (عليه السلام)

في ذكرى ولادته.. قسم الشؤون الدينية يستذكر فضائل الإمام الرضا (عليه السلام)

المزيد

الآخبار الصحية

أطعمة مفيدة وأخرى ضارة للأسنان

دراسة تكشف تأثيرا خفيا لتناول المانجو والأفوكادو معاً

لكسر الإدمان وحماية الصحة.. بدائل طبيعية للسكر المعالج

قرار تاريخي في بريطانيا.. منع التدخين تماما لمواليد 2008

المزيد

الآخبار التكنلوجية

10 أخطاء يومية تدمّر سيارتك ومحركها بصمت: كيف تحافظ عليها؟

روسيا.. تطوير هيدروجيل حيوي لتحسين كفاءة الري وتنظيم رطوبة التربة

حل لغز البرق البركاني ؟

تطبيق ذكاء اصطناعي يتصفح الإنترنت ومنصات التواصل بدلا عنك !

المزيد

مواضيع ذات صلة

Ambiguity

Speech acts

Maxim flouts

Flouting the maxims

Comedy pragmatics

Defeasible implicatures

The pragmatics of political interviews

Good cop, bad cop

The co-operative principle

Grice’s theory of implicature

Meaning in context

Pragmatics: saying what you mean