COHESION, COHERENCE AND ABSURDITY: THE WE MAKE

SENSE OUT OF TEXTS

Let us look at the following two groups of sentences-

i.Sachin Tendulkar stared at yet another challenge when he left Mumbai

on Saturday with wife Anjali for London. The maestro will be operated on

his right shoulder by dr. Andrew Wallace on Monday. Since he needs

around eight weeks to recover, Tendulkar has been ruled out of the ODI

series against England. There is question mark about his availability for

India’s tour of West Indies as well. (Hindu, 26/3/ 2006)

ii .Indian democracy is in a very bad state. Cricket is a very interesting

game. Sachin scored a century recently. Well, the summer is going to be

very hot.

Whereas i. above will be immediately recognized as a coherent text, ii. will be

difficult to make sense of. The difference between the two is that i. is a text, where as ii.

is merely a group of sentences put together without any logical or grammatical

connection between the sentences. i. is ‘coherent’: ii. is absurd. Let us now look at the

concepts of cohesion, coherence and absurdity keeping in mind the above two examples.

We will be mainly asking ourselves what are the elements that make i. a meaningful text

and ii. an absurd collage of sentences.

To begin with, let us talk about textuality. Textuality is “---what enables the

speaker or writer to construct ‘texts’, or connected passages of discourse that is

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situationally relevant” and “--- it expresses the structure of information, and the relation

of each part of the discourse to the whole and to the setting” ( Halliday, as quoted in Joia

and Stenton,1980: 50). It is clear that when talking about texts, we will have to move

beyond sentence. For a long time the dominant trend in linguistics was to look at sentence

as the basic unit of language. However, the development of discourse analysis lead to a

study of the larger-than-sentence units and it was seen that textual organization is not a

mere extension of syntactic organization. As van Dijk says “Those syntactic relationships

that have traditionally formed the core of grammar-hold only within the sentence. If we

extend them to descriptions of intersentential relations, we are lapsing into metaphor.

------. Infact the domain of text and discourse linguistics is more congruent with that of

rhetoric than with that of syntax” (1985: 13). Halliday and Hasan make the same point

when they say “A text is not something that differs from a sentence, only bigger; it is

something that differs from a sentence in kind” (1976: 2). Let us now see how

intersentential relations lead to textuality.

Meaningful text manifests both cohesion and coherence. The term cohesion is

generally used to refer to the grammatical connectivity between the sentences of a

discourse and coherence is used to refer to the semantic organization of the content. For

example, Bublidge et al use the term cohesion for “the syntactic organization of discourse

which can be recognized by the discourse receiver.” And they say “The semantic

organization of discourse can to a large extent be characterized as a set of properties

which we designate by the term ‘coherence” (Bublidge et al, 1999:5). Velde D. van also

makes similar point when he says “ ----( cohesion is) the syntactic organization of

discourse which can be recognized by the discourse receiver.--- The semantic

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organization of discourse can to a large extent characterized as a set of properties which

we designate by the term ‘coherence’” (1984: 5). Thus cohesion refers to the grammatical

connectedness between sentences of a text, whereas coherence refers to the semantic

connectedness.

Let us first look at the concept of cohesion. Halliday and Hasan(1976) make a

detailed analysis of cohesion in English in their book ‘Cohesion on English’. They say

that in a text, the sentences are interconnected. As they say “Cohesion occurs when the

interpretation of some element in discourse is dependent on another” (1972:4). There are

‘ties’ that bind the sentences together. There can be immediate ties and remote ties.

Broadly, the cohesive ties can be either exophoric or endophoric. When we have to go

outside the text to interpret the tie, we have exophoric cohesion. Another broad category

is catophoric and anaphoric. When the interpretation of a tie depends on what has

preceded, we have anaphoric cohesion; if the interpretation depends on what is to follow,

we have catophoric cohesion. The famous first sentence of ‘Pride and Prejudice’ -It is a

truth universally acknowledged that a single man with good fortune is in need of a wife-

can be an example of catophoric cohesion. Halliday and Hasan further say that reference,

substitution, ellipsis, conjunction and lexical cohesion are the different types of cohesion

in English. Let us now look at the passage i. To see how it shows cohesion.

Sachin Tendulkar stared at yet another challenge when he left Mumbai on

Saturday with wife Anjali for London. The maestro will be operated on his

right shoulder by dr. Andrew Wallace on Monday. Since he needs around

eight weeks to recover, Tendulkar has been ruled out of the ODI series

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against England. There is question mark about his availability for India’s

tour of West Indies as well.

Let us see the different ways in which the sentences connect together. The

passage is about Tendulkar. In the first sentence, we have his name. The second sentence

uses the word ‘maestro’ to refer to him. This is case of lexical cohesion that uses a

general word. The next sentence uses the personal pronoun ‘he’ and this is a personal

reference. When connected with the second clause in the sentence (Since he needs around

eight weeks to recover, Tendulkar has been ruled out of the ODI series against England ),

it can be seen as an example of catophoric cohesion. There is lexical repetition in the

repetition of the name Tendulkar. The final sentence uses an additive conjunction in ‘as

well’. Thus even a small passage like this shows many grammatical links among the

sentences and these links make the passage a meaningful text. But text ii. does not show

any of these connections-

Indian democracy is in a very bad state. Cricket is a very interesting

game. Sachin scored a century recently. Well, the summer is going to be

very hot.

There is no explicit grammatical connectivity among the different sentences of the

passage.

However, grammatical connectedness in itself can not fully account for the well

formed ness of the texts. In the passage i. above, for example look at the word ‘maestro’

which is used to refer to Tendulkar. What makes us think that it is Tendulkar that we are

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talking about? If the word was used with respect to some other batsman (say, Kaif), could

we have made the connection? And how does ‘yet another challenge’ make sense? Let us

look at another example-

iii. Expert motor driving school for

Ladies and gents 22 years of excellent

Service branch road no.2, Beside

Q.Mart, Banjarahills. 9246271113.

The above is an advertisement for a driving school. We make clear sense of the

passage even when there is no clear and explicit cohesion. For example, we recognize the

phone number even when the text has not mentioned that it is a phone number. We also

can recognize whereto locate the school, though this is possible only if we are

Hyderabadis. Here is an example of a text which does not exhibit cohesion, but still we

can not say that this is absurd. Similarly, it is possible to form a text that exhibits all

grammatical connectedness, but one which still can be called absurd. For example, look

at the following hypothetical text-

vi. Sachin Tendulkar was batting on 50. He looked at the bowler who was

getting ready to serve. Sachin held his racket firmly and got ready for a

forehand. The maestro wanted to use his height for advantage.

The passage exhibits all the cohesive ties that we saw in text i. It even uses the

word ‘maestro’ to refer to Tendulkar. But to anyone who knows cricket, the text is

absurd. Those who know Tendulkar’s height will also wonder how he can make use of all

his five foot four inch frame. Thus cohesion in itself is not enough to account for the

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well-connectedness of a text. We need to go beyond cohesion to coherence. And this

coherence is not merely a formal textual feature. As Brown and Yule say “The reaction of

some scholars to the question of ‘coherence’ is to search for cues to coherence within the

text and this may indeed yield a descriptive account of the characteristics of some types

of text. It ignores, however, the fact that human beings do not require formal textual

markers before they are prepared to interpret a text.”(1983:66)

Broadly speaking, coherence refers to the strategies employed by the reader to

make sense out of a text. Coherence is something that can be analyzed at different levels.

The usual definitions of coherence focus on the textual properties that can be determined

linguistically and on the contextual properties that depend on the reader’s knowledge of

the linguistic and non-linguistic facts of his culture. For example, coherence is “The

degree to which a piece of discourse makes sense. ---. A coherent discourse has a high

degree of --- connectedness” (Trask, 2004:39) and “ To refer to the coherence of

discourse is to refer to the ways in which its parts constitute a whole. We are talking

about whether and how a discourse makes sense---” (Edmundson, 1999: 252). But it is

necessary to point out that connectedness and ‘making sense’ are two different

phenomena that require different strategies from the reader and there is a need to

distinguish between the text-intrinsic and the text-extrinsic organization. The

connectedness between the different units of a narrative is text-intrinsic whereas the

superstructure and frame form the text extrinsic level of coherence. Lindemann expresses

these levels in the following way-

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1) Micro structure

Text intrinsic

2) Macrostructure vs. Linguistic

3) Superstructure text extrinsic vs.

organization

4) Frame Non-linguistic organization

(Lindemann, 1983: 29).

Let us look at each of these categories and try account for the coherence in some

texts. Micro-structure refers to the interconnectedness between the successive units of a

text. This includes cohesion also. We have already seen the role cohesion plays in text i.

But along with cohesion, we can also note the semantic connectedness between the

successive sentences of text i. This semantic connectedness can be seen as the

connectedness between the propositions of each sentence. Each sentence of text i. refers

to the same topic- that is Tendulkar. Van Dijk calls this argument repetition. Text ii. is

absurd not only because of the lack of cohesion, but also because the successive

sentences refer to different and unconnected proposition. Thus the coherence of any text

is a matter of the micro-structure. Such a micro- structure manifests itself in terms of

local coherence. As Velde D. van says “In the case of local discourse processing,

inference-making processes concern only the sequential structure of propositions

underlying adjacent utterances. Here it is advisable to call the established semantic

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connections by the term ‘local coherence’. In the case of global discourse processing,

propositions underlying separate utterances are integrated into the total semantic

organization of discourse. Here it is justified to denote the emerging hierarchical structure

by the term ‘global coherence’”(Velde.D. van, 1980: 15)

This global coherence is a matter of the macro- structure. We make sense out of a

text not just on the basis of the connectedness between successive sentences or any other

units of the text. Along with micro- structure, texts also exhibit macro-structure. That is,

as a group the propositions belong to some common field. Van Dijk illustrates with the

following example- “ One way of approaching text coherence (as opposed to the kind of

overt textual cohesion that is marked by syntactically definable co-reference) is to look

for such textual macrostructures as reveal a unifying underlying theme linking sentences

to each other. “Susie went to the railway station. She bought a ticket for Stockholm, went

out to the platform, waited for the train, and climbed into a second class carriage.” This

coheres because it has a macrostructure “Susie went to Stockholm by train”. (van Dijk

1977: 28). Thus texts exhibit coherence through macro-structure also.

Micro-structure and macro-structure are text-intrinsic properties. That is, they are

available in the text itself. But superstructures are text extrinsic properties of discourse.

Super structure is defined as “--- schemata for conventional text forms; knowledge of

these forms facilitates generating, remembering and reproducing macrostructures.”(van

Dijk, 1983:54). Though they are text extrinsic features, still they are linguistic features.

Let us look at the example iii. again-

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Expert motor driving school for

Ladies and gents 22 years of excellent

Service branch road no.2, Beside

Q.Mart, Banjarahills. 9246271113

This text makes sense because we have a sense of the superstructure. The super

structure here belongs to the field of advertisement. In literature the superstructure plays a

very important role in determining coherence. A story beginning with the sentence ‘ once

upon a time, in a far off land-----” will make sense only if we are familiar with the

superstructure of folk tales. The novels of James Joyce or Virginia Wolfe may not make

sense to someone who is not familiar with modernism and its conventions. Sometimes

superstructure plays such a strong role in determining coherence in literature that we

accept as coherent even those things which our commonsense would think of as absurd.

Thus we enjoy stories where in the first line itself we hear that the protagonist has

become a cockroach (Metamorphosis, Kafka)!

The next level of coherence is the script or the frame. This is a non-linguistic

aspect of coherence. Van Dijk uses the term knowledge structures to talk about frames.

He says “During comprehension, readers pull out from their general store of knowledge

some particular packet of knowledge and use it provide a framework for the text they are

reading.”(1983:43) “Causal relations exist between states and events in the physical

world. Knowledge about them is often crucial for interpreting a text….Typically a text

leaves some crucial causal relationship implicit, and the readers have to supply this

missing link from their own knowledge.”(Van Dijk, 1983:43). We all have some

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knowledge of the world and we have schemata in our minds. When we encounter a text,

we try to fit it into one or the other schemata. Let us look again at the hypothetical

example that we discussed earlier-

Sachin Tendulkar was batting on 50. He looked at the bowler who was

getting ready to serve. Sachin held his racket firmly and got ready for a

forehand. The maestro wanted to use his height for advantage.

The text has cohesion and it also has micro-structure. Each sentence adds to the

theme of the previous sentence. In terms of macro-structure, the global theme of the text

is ‘Sachin facing a bowler’. The super structure of the text is that of commentary. In spite

of all these, the text does not make sense. It is because it does not fit in with the script or

the schemata of cricket. The first sentence by using the word batting introduces the

scheme of cricket, but the word ‘forehand’ used in the next sentence does not fit in with

this schema.

Thus cohesion, micro-structure, macro-structure, superstructure and frame are the

different aspects of coherence. A coherent text will be coherent if it satisfies our

expectations from these different points of view. To conclude, let us look at a poem (a

non-sense poem) to see how it makes sense, i.e. if it makes sense at all. We are looking at

the first paragraph from a poem by Edward Lear-

The owl and the Pussycat went to seaIn a beautiful pea-green boat,They took some honey, and plenty ofMoney,Wrapped up in a five pound note.The owl looked up to the stars above,

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And sang to a small guitar,“O lovely Pussy! O Pussy my love,what a beautiful Pussy you are,you are,you are, What a beautiful Pussy you are!”

Let us see why this poem is called a non-sense poem. The passage exhibits

cohesion very clearly. All cohesive ties are anaphoric. We have the pronoun ‘they’

referring to the owl and the pussy, the pronoun ‘you’ referring to the pussy. We have

lexical repetition in ‘the owl’ and we have lexical substitution in ‘my love’. Thus from

the point of view of view of cohesion there is no reason to call this poem non-sense.

Semantically, the passage exhibits micro-structure. All the sentences are

semantically connected. Each sentence deals with what the owl and the pussy cat did. We

have macro-structure also. The macro-theme of the passage can be said to be ‘The owl

and the pussy cat went to a picnic and the owl sang a song’. Thus the passage is coherent

from all the intra-textual yardsticks. Still we have found no reason to call it absurd.

In terms of superstructure, the passage belongs to a type of literature called

poetry. This is indicated by the typological shape and by the presence of rhyme. If the

super-structure was that of a narrative, the passage would not have been coherent. In

narrative we expect clear place and time indicators. A narrative that does not give it

would not be coherent. But we know that this is a poem. Hence we do not worry that it

has not begun with ‘ One day, a owl and a pussy cat------”. This clearly shows that what

is coherent for a particular kind of communication may not be coherent for a different

kind of communication.

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Why then is this poem called non-sense poem? The source of the absurdity of this

poem does not lie in linguistic features. It lies in non-linguistic features. It is true that

there are many things in the poem familiar to our experience of the world. We have the

picnic frame and the courting frame. When you go to a picnic you take some thing to eat

and when you court, it is very natural to play a guitar. But the absurdity of the poem lies

in the participants in this activity. The owl and pussy cat going to picnic does not fit in

with any of our frames or schemas. Taking money in a purse is in accordance with our

schema, but taking money and honey in a five pound note is not in accordance with any

of our experience! And the owl falling in love with a cat is also not in any of our

schemas. Thus the poem is not coherent from the point of view of frame. That is why it is

called a non-sense poem.

Thus, a given text may be absurd because of different reasons. It can be absurd

because it lacks cohesion. It can be absurd because there are no micro and macro

connectedness between the different sentences. It can be absurd because it uses the wrong

superstructure. Or it can be absurd because it does not make sense: it does not fit in with

any of our schemas. But practically speaking, there are very few absurd texts. That is why

most of the examples for incoherence in this paper are hypothetical examples. The non-

sense poem mentioned above can not be senseless if it has given joy to many people! We

find some sense in a play or a poem which calls itself absurd. That is why people try to

make sense out of Becket’s plays. It seems that we have a great ability to make sense of

absurdity and we can say that very few authentic texts are absurd. Almost all instances of

language use have coherence.

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References-

Brown, Gillian and George Yule. Discourse Analysis Cambridge University press,

1983.

Bubldge, Wolferam, Uta Lenk and Eija Ventola. Ed. Coherence in Spoken and Written

Discourse : How to Create It and How to Describe It. Amsterdam/Philadelphia,

John Benjamins publishing company; 1999.

Dijk, Teun A. van. Discourse and Literature. Amsterdam/Philadelphia, John Benjamins

publishing company: 1985.

Dijk, Teun A. Van and Walter kintsch Strategies of Discourse Comprehension ,

Academic press , inc. Orlando, Florida, 1983.

Edmondson, Willis J. If Coherence is Achieved, Then Where Doth Meaning Lie? in

Coherence in Spoken and Written Discourse: How to Create It and How to

Describe It, 250-265.

Halliday, M.Y.K. and Raqaiya Hasan. Cohesion in English. London, Longman; 1976.

Joia, Alex de and Adrian Stenton Terms in Systemic Linguistics: A Guide to Halliday.

London, Batsford Academic and Educational limited; 1980.

Lindemann, B. Text as process: An integrated view of a science of texts. Journal of

Pragmatics, vol.12, no.1: 1983, pg.5-41.

Trask, R.L. Key Concepts in Language and Linguistics. London, Routledge; 2004.

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Velde, Van D. Prolegomena to Inferential Discourse Processing Pragmatics and

Beyond vol. 2. Amsterdam/Philadelphia, John Benjamins publishing company;

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