REFERENCE

Reference is one of the three main types of cohesion together with conjunction and lexical cohesion.

The cohesive resource of reference refers to how the writer/ speaker introduces participants and then keeps track of them once they are in the text. Participants are the people, places and things that get talked about in the text.

Whenever participants are mention in the text, the writer must signal to the reader whether the identity of the participant is already known or not. Participants in a text may be either presented to us (introduced as new) or presumed (encoded in such a way we need to retrieve the identify for somewhere).

-High above the city, on a tall column, stood the statue of the Happy Prince.

Only presuming participants create cohesion in a text.

The commonest presuming reference items:

A) The definite article (the)

B) Demonstrative pronouns (that, these)

C) Pronouns (he, she, its).

The identity of the presuming referent item may be retrievable from a number of different contexts:

-HOMOPHORIC REFERENCE: From the general context of culture; contributes to the text coherence.

-When the moon rose he flew back to the Happy Prince.

-EXOPHORIC REFERENCE: From the immediate context of situation; contributes to the text coherence.

-ENDOPHORIC REFERENCE: From elsewhere within the text itself. It creates cohesion and the internal texture of the text.

*Endophoric reference can be of three main kinds:

A) ANAPHORIC REFERENCE: This occurs when the referent has appeared at an earlier point in the text.

-He was very much admired indeed.

B) CATAPHORIC REFERENCE: This occurs when the referent has not yet appeared, but will be provided in a different sentence or paragraph.

-“Bring me the two most precious things in the city,” said God to one of His Angels; and the angel brought Him the leaden heart and the dead bird.

C) ESPHORIC REFERENCE: This occurs when the referent occurs in the phrase immediately following the presuming reference item.

-So he alighted just between the feet of the Happy Prince.