CHAPTER IINTRODUCTION

The study and analysis of actual language in used is the goal of text and discourse

analysis. Michael Halliday, one of the linguists credited with the development of systemic

linguistics and functional grammar, defines text as any authentic stretch of written or spoken

language. According to Hallyday (1994:14) the historical study of linguistics first involved

studying the morphology of language followed by studying the meaning of words at the sentence

level. Ultimately the goal of such analysis was to find the meaning of the forms of language.

However, in Halliday’s view, the reverse approach is more meaningful: “A language is

interpreted as a system of meanings, accompanied by forms through which the meaning can be

expressed”. Beyond the grammar and lexis of language, understanding the mechanisms for how

text is structured is the basis for his work. What makes any length of text meaningful and

coherent has been termed texture. Texture is the basis for unity and semantic interdependence

within text and a text without texture would just be a group of isolated sentences with no

relationship to one another. Eggins (1994:85) refers to the term put forth by schegloff and Sacks

(1973-1974) “sequential implicativeness” which proposes that language follows a linear

sequence where one line of text follows another with each line being linked or related to the

previous line. This linear progression of text creates a context for meaning. Contextual meaning,

at the paragraph level is referred to as “coherence” while the internal properties of meaning are

referred to as “cohesion”. Coherence has both situational coherence when field, tenor, and mode

can be identified for a certain group of clauses and “generic” coherence when the text can be

recognized as belonging to a certain genre. Cohesion relates to the semantic ties within text

where by a tie is made when there is some dependent link between items that combine to create

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meaning. Therefore, texture is created within text when there are properties of coherence and

cohesion, outside of the apparent grammatical structure of the text. The principles of referencing,

substitution, ellipsis, conjunction, and lexical cohesion put forth by Halliday and Hasan (1976)

and Bloor and Bloor (1995) will be applied to the article and analyzed to demonstrate the

relevance of the cohesive elements that are present in texts which contribute to the overall

meaning of the text. Understanding how cohesion functions within text to create semantic links

could be beneficial to students of English as a second of foreign language to help decode

meaning.

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CHAPTER IICRITICISM

A. Principle of Cohesion

Structure in text is provided by grammar therefore cohesion is considered to be outside of

the structure. Cohesion refers to the non-structural text-forming relations. (Halliday and Hasan

1976:7) the concept of cohesion in text is related to semantic ties or relations of meanings that

exist within the text, and that define it as a text (ibid:4). Within text, if a previously mentioned

item is referred to again and is dependent upon another element, it is considered a tie. Without

semantic ties, sentences or utterances would seem to lack any type of relationship to each other

and might not be considered text. Halliday and Hasan (ibid:4) refer to this intertextual link as the

presupposing and the presupposed. Using the authors’ example: “Wash and core six cooking

apples. Put them into a fireproof dish.” The word “them” presupposes “apples” and provides a

semantic tie between the two sentences, thus creating cohesion. Cohesion creates

interdependency in text.

B. Reference

Referencing functions to retrieve presupposed information in text and must be identify

able for it to be considered as cohesive. In written text, referencing indicates how the writer

introduces participants and keeps track of them throughout the text.

(Eggins 1994:95) there are three general types of referencing are as follows:

1. Exophoric referencing, this refers to information from the immediate context of situation.

Example: look at that flower.

2. Endophoric referencing, which refers to information that can be retrieved from within the

text? It is this endophoric referencing which is the focus of cohesion theory.

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Endophoric referencing can be divided into three areas are:

a) Anaphoric

Anaphoric refers to any reference that point backwards to previously mentioned

information in text.

For example: look at the flower. It’s so beautiful

(It refers back to the flower)

For cohesion purpose, anaphoric referencing is the most relevant as it provides a link

with a preceding portion of the text (Halliday and Hasan 1976:51). Functional

speaking, there are three main types of cohesive references, they are:

Person

Person reference keeps track of function through the speech situation using

noun pronouns like “He, him, she, her, etc”. And possessive determiners like

“mine, yours, his, hers, etc”.

For example: Petter has many books. Those books are his.

Demonstrative

Demonstrative reference keeps of information through location using

proximity references like “this, these, that, those, here, there, then, and the.”

For example: This is my book. I bough it yesterday.

Comparative

Comparative reference keeps track of identity and similarity through indirect

references using adjectives like “same, equal, similar, different, else, better,

more.” And adverbs like “so, such, similarly, otherwise, so, more, etc.” (ibid:

37-39)

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For example: Jack has a white shirt. I bought the same shirt with him.

b) Cataphoric

Cataphoric refers to any reference that point forward to information that will be

presented later in the text.

For example: It’s so beautiful, the flower.

(It refers forward to the flower)

c) Esphoric

Esophoric refers to any reference within the same nominal group or phrase which

follows the presupposed item.

For example: a few numbers of students get good score.

C. Ellipsis and Substitution

Whereas referencing functions to link semantic meanings within text, substitution and

ellipsis differs in that it operates as a linguistic link at the lexicogrammatical level. In Bloor and

Bloor (1995:96), 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.”

For example: Wealthier Italians whose parents quit farms for the cities in the 60’s are

coming back.

The word “coming back” refers to line before in which the elliptical references to the

children of farmers are returning to the farms that their parents quit.

The three types of classification for substitution and ellipsis that reflect its grammatical function

are as follows:

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1. Nominal

In nominal substitution, the most typical substitution words are “one and ones” and they

substitute nouns.

For example: This car is mine, but that one is yours.

2. Verbal

In verbal substitution, the most common substitute is the verb “do” and is sometime used

in conjunction with “so” as in “do so” and substitute verbs. Halliday and Hasan (ibid:

125-126) point out that “do” often operate with the reference items “it” and “that” but

still have the main function as a verbal substitute because of its grammatical role.

For example: You buy a new book and she do too.

From: you buy a new book and she buys a ne book too.

3. Clause

In clause 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.

When something in text is being substituted, it follows that the substituted item maintains

the same structural function as the presupposed item. Though substitution and ellipsis are similar

in their function as the linguistic link for cohesion, ellipsis differs in that it is substitution by zero

(ibid: 142). Ellipsis refers to a presupposed anaphoric item although the reference is not through

a place-marker like in substitution. The presupposed item is understood through its structural

link. As it is a structural link, ellipsis operates through nominal, verbal and clausal levels.

Halliday and Hasan further classify ellipsis in systemic linguistic terminology as deictic,

enumerative, epithet, classifier, and qualifier.

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D. Conjunction

Conjunction, as described by Bloor and Bloor (1995:98) acts as a cohesive tie between

clause or sections of text in such a way as to demonstrate a meaningful pattern between them,

though Halliday and Hasan (ibid: 227) indicate that conjunction relations are not tied to any

particular sequence in the expression. Therefore, amongst the cohesion forming devices within

text, conjunction is the least directly identify able relation.

Conjunction acts as a semantic cohesive tie within text in four categories, they are:

Additive

Additive conjunction acts to structurally coordinate or link by adding to the presupposed

item and are signaled through “and, also, too, furthermore, additionally”, etc. additive

conjunction may also act to negate the presupposed item and is signaled by “nor, and…

not, either, neither, etc.”

For example: I don’t like smoking, and neither does he.

(Deriver from: I don’t like smoking. He doesn’t like smoking).

Adversative

Adversative conjunctions act to indicate “contrary to expectation” (ibid: 250) and are

signaled by “yet, though, only, but, in fact, rather, etc”

For example: Peter in English students, but he can’t speak English.

Causal

Causal conjunction expresses “result, reason and purpose” and is signaled by “so, then,

for, because, for this reason, as a result, in this respect, etc”.

For example: She studied match hardly as a result she passed the exam.

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Temporal

The last conjunctive category is temporal and links by signaling sequence or time.

Some samples temporal conjunctive signals are “then, next, after, that, next day, until

then, a the same time, at this pint, etc”

For example: I get up at 5 o’clock in the morning then taking a bath.

E. Theme and Rheme

Most learners, when learning the grammar of a foreign language, spend time assimilating

the structure of clauses in that language, i.e. where subjects, objects and adverbials are placed in

relation to the verb, and what options are available for rearranging the most typical sequences.

Discourse analysis are interested in the implications of these different structural options for the

creation of text, and as always, it is from the examination of natural data that patterns of use are

seen to emerge. Some of the structural options frequently found in natural data are ignored or

underplayed in language teaching (especially those found in spoken data, which are often

dismissed as degraded or bad style), probably owing to the continued dominance of standards

taken from the written code.

English is what is often called an ‘SVO’ language, in that the declarative clause requires

a verb at its centre, a subject before it and any object after it. This is simply a labeling device

which enables comparisons to be made with declarative realizations in different languages, some

of which will be ‘VSO’ or ‘SOV’ languages. This pattern is often recast in English, no least in

interrogative structures, where the verbal group is split by the subject (“does she like cats?”), and

in cases where the object is brought forward:

1. The Guardian, Joyce reads.

(OSV Object-fronted)

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There are in English a variety of ways in which the basic clause elements of subject, verb,

and complement object, adverbial can be rearranged by putting different elements at the

beginning of the clause, as illustrated in sentence 1 to 3 which is as way of bringing different

element to the front are called fronting devices.

2. She reads the Guardian, Joyce.

S (pronoun) VOS (noun) Right-displaced subject

3. Joyce, she reads the Guardian

S (noun) S (pronoun) VO left displaced subject

Structures such as sentence 2 and 3 are far from infrequent in spoken data, but are often

for no obvious reason, not presented in books claiming to describe grammatical options for the

learner. If we look again at our examples from the point of view of how the information in them

is presented, we can see how different options enable us to focus on or highlight certain

elements: sentence1 seems to be saying something about the Guardian rather than about Joyce;

sentence 2 and 3 seem to be telling us something about Joyce. This aboutness is the sort of

notion discourse analysis are concerned with for it is a speaker/writer choice made independently

of the propositional content of the message; the speaker/writer decides how to stage the

information, where to start, so to speak, in presenting the message.

In English, what we decide to bring to the front of the clause (by whatever means) is a

signal of what is to be understood as the framework within which what we want to say is to be

understood. The rest of the clause can then be seen as transmitting what we want to say within

this framework. Items brought to front-place in this way we shall call the themes (or topics) of

their clauses in what has been called the Prague school of linguistics, the relationship of the

theme to the rest of the sentence is viewed as part of communicative dynamism, that is the

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assessment of the extent to which each element contributes to the development of the

communication. Alternatively, the theme can be seen as the point of departure of the message

(Halliday 1985:38). For the moment, we shall take as the theme of a clause the subject noun-

phrase, or, if this is not initial, then we shall include whatever comes before it. It seems that first

position in the clause is important in many of the world’s languages, and that creating a theme in

the clause is a universal feature, though its realizations may vary from language to language.

Concentrating on the themes (or topics) of clauses does not tell us much about the rest of

the clause, which may be called the rheme or comment of the clause. In fact, when we look at

themes and rhemes together in connected text, we see further patterns emerging we can divide

our postcard text into themes and rhemes:

Themes (topic Rhemes (comment)

1. I ‘m sitting here…

2. Outside my window is a big lawn…

3. In the middle of the lawn is a flower bed

4. The bed was full of daffodils…

5. You ‘d love it here

6. You must come and stay

7. We ‘ve got plenty of room

Two different options can be sees to be realized here: (a) the rheme of sentence 3

contains an element (the flower bed) which becomes the theme of sentence 4; (b) the theme of

sentence 5 is the same as the rheme of sentence 6.

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CHAPTER IIICONCLUSION

This chapter has taken a selection of grammatical concepts and has attempted to show

how discourse analysis has contributed to our understanding of the relationship between local

choice within the clause and sentence and the organization of the discourse as a whole. When

speakers and writers are producing discourse, they are at the same time as they are busy

constructing clause, monitoring the development of the larger discourse, and their choices at the

local level can be seen simultaneously to reflect the concerns of the discourse as an unfolding

production, with an audience, whether present or projected. A discourse-oriented approach to

grammar would suggest not only a grater emphasis on contexts larger than the sentence, but also

a reassessment of priorities in terms of what is taught about such things as word order, articles,

ellipsis, tense and aspect, and some of the other categories discussed here.

If grammar is seen to have a direct role in welding clauses, turns and sentences into

discourse, what of words themselves? What role does vocabulary choice play in the discourse

process? It is to this question that we turn next.

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Answer question

1. Which sentence is including anaphoric referencing?

a. If you couldn’t, I would like you to be back here at five thirty

b. Look at the flower. It’s so beautiful

c. Look at that

d. I had left my cattle

2. There are three types of classification for ellipsis and substitution that reflect its

grammatical function. Except

a. Nominal

b. Verbal

c. Homophoric

d. Clausal

3. Which sentence is including comparative reference?

a. It’s so beautiful, the flower

b. This car is mine, but that one is yours

c. I am very satisfied with it

d. Jack has white shirt. I bought the same shirt with him

4. Ellipsis is the omission of elements normally required by the grammar which the

speaker/writer assumes are obvious from the context and therefore need not be raised.

Based on the definition above, it refers to…

a. Ellipsis

b. Conjunction

c. Clausal

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d. Reference

5. There are three main types of cohesive references except…

a. Personal

b. Demonstrative

c. Comparative

d. Cataphoric

Answer key

1. B. look at the flower. It’s so beautiful

2. C. Homophoric

3. D. Jack has white shirt. I bought the same shirt with him

4. A. Ellipsis

5. D. Cataphoric

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REFERENCES

Brown Gillian & George Yule. 1984. Discourse Analysis. Cambridge University Press.

Crane Paul A. 1994. Texture in Text: A Discourse Analysis of A News Article Using Halliday and Hasan’s Model of Cohesion. Retrived (09 nov 2009) from http://library.nakanishi.ac.ip/kiyou/gaida i%2830%29/08.pdf.

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