ENGLISH LANGUAGE SERIES Gmeral Editor · Rmululpf, Quirk TJtk no: tNVES1IGATING :ENGliSH STYLF Davtd Crystal and Dcrck Davy THE MOVEMENT OF ENGLISH PRO!:>E lan A Gordon ENGLISH IN ADVIcRTISIXG- A liNGUISilC STUDY Of ADVJ:.RllSING JN GREAT BRITAIN Geoffrcy N leech A LJNGUI~TIC GUIDE TO Et\GLISU POETRY; ~ Geoffrey N Leech THF ~NGLISH LANGUAGE IN WEST AI RICA ) Ediror : John ~penccr THE t::NCL!SH LANGUAGB IN AUSTRALIA f1 AND NEW ZEALAND G W Turner ANINTltODUCfiONIO Ml>DI:Ill" !c.NGliSH WORD-f.OilMAJION Valene Adams 'PEF CH IN TILE ENGLI!>H '-'OVJ:.l 1:! Norman Page COH.CSlON IN ENGU:O H M A K Halliday and RL1qaiya Hasan AX INTRODUCTION 10 tNGLlS.H 10 TRANSFORI\·111 llONAL !.YN fA X Rod ne) H uJdlcston Cohesion 1n English M A K HALLIDA Y Pr(lfessor of Lingt-tistrcs University ~f Essex ll-11> r:u::::J r::J I:J(:Jc:J c=7 LONGMAN LONGMAN GROUP LIMITED LONDO N Assoc.atcd comp3n!esl branc11e.S anti representatives tbroughout the world © Longman Group Ltd 1976 All l'ighrs r~scned , No pJn of lhtl grounds1r was not unreasonably held that relations 'beyond the sentence' involved a complex interplay of lmgUJstics with other concerns such as rhcroric, aesthetics, and pragmatics, for wluch the theoretical foundations and framework were too shaky w supporr ambitious model bmlding And that m my case lingmm had enough on hand to get their sentent!al home furnished Meanwhile, literary crirics (for whom of course text structure has been a traditional concern) and social anthro pologists (for whom text and talc ~ramme m Litrgurstics a11d English Tcachr'ng at Untvcrstty College London The at m of these studie~ was to provide an account of aspects of contemporary English which would be both founded on theory and also applicable m practtcc: a description of the system, but 011(' which, since it w aN based on evidence from texts of different varierics, Ulcluding both spoken and written, would be useful in application to further text studies A relativdy neglected aspect of the lmguistic system is it~ resources for rext construction, the range of meanings that arc specifically associated With relarmg what is being said or written to its semantic environment The pnnClpal component o f these resources is that of cohes•on Cohesive relatJons are relations between two or more elements in a text that are independent of the structure; for example betwt"en a personal pronoLm and an antecedent proper name, such as jolm _ he A semanric relauon of th1~ kind may be set up either wirhm a sentence or between sentences; with the consequence that, when it crosses a sentence boundary, 1t has the dfecr of making the two sentences cohere with one another The various kinds of cohesion had been outlined b y M A K HalltJay in his wntings on sryhstics, and the concept was developed by Ruqaiya Hasan tn her Umverstty of Edmburgh doctoral rhesis The earlier chapters of this book w ere first published as CrarJIII1ttticnl Co11esio11 itJ Spoke11 m1d Written Et~glislr, Pnrt I, by Ruqaiya Ha)an, Commumcanon Research Centre (University College London) and Longman> Green & Co, Programme ill Lmgrtistics m11i E11gltsh Te,Jcl1111g: Papers, No 7, 1968 T his contained Cha.pters r, and in their ori gm-noun 102-4 forms eof (table), 1o6 "'"'· Otl 11&-9 thesis, ZJ~ 26'] Jitry, tlftm, llrrir(s) tie Z93> 2;96 a ""'• roz Si.> Chi-n:eu: Diala::ts J et al Send edition g-~~~$.~Afl Cruttenc'en, A (ed) Gimsan '~ Pnmunciativn of Engtim Sixth Edition Gus:>enhoven, C et al Umh>ntanding Phmwlogy -t-.*.~>1 Kagt'T, R Optimalitv Theory Roach, P English Phun~ticinli11J!Uistio; Thin:! edition ¥-.it jj"t~~l ~ Aitchison, J The Artit::uiate JltftJmmd: An 1-ntnxluction 10 Fourth edition 378 P~Jwhnguist;c;, Psychoio;zy of l.a~ge Third edi1ion Csormll, D W it-""$" •U ~ 'f: lntereultural Crnr.municati.on ~.X f.tJC!iJ; Cultures Second edition Samovar , L A et al Ccmmunicu.tiSt· # ~ Tun «h1.1ology l!llf~ In Other Word;'f: Kum:edy, G An Introduction tu Wrpu.s Lingui5tin -ffl #J.$.-:i-iit~Afl Wh Second edition ,lt- -$- Jt , A i;- A: ~ it $IJ # )jt 1,; -$ First Umguage A.:q::.isition ;g-m~ 5J14 Foote: Cchen, S H An lntroductiJ1f Cook, V Sa:or.d Lang:.,age Lcar.ring and Langwa.ge- Tcachmg Second edition James, C Erro:s i11 Language Learr.i:ng and Use: Exploring EnYir Analy.iH A Practical Guide to Researching Lan,_ 1i-T"tiJ.JA:il1:l.lt3t~.Dl-ll.lJ Testing ill~'$: A.ldt'nlOn J C er sL Bachman, LF et al lnterfm:et between Secr.nd Language Acgui:u."tion and Language Testing Ruearch -~*~~~~*~~~~~~4P Davie;, A et al Dit:t:Umary of Language TeJting ii-"t""il'Jil.f;JJ.Jil Henning, G A Guide to Language Testing: Development, Evalw:Uion tmd Re:>earch Hea:on, J B Writing En!diMI Language Tests New edition Wood, R .1\su-ssment and Terting: A Survey of Researr:h jtft;~~iii.:$J!"3t'*l! Academic Writing$;f::~f1:: Robens, W H et al A!xmt Language~ Reader for Writers Fifth edition ilii-T: 1i-ff'"it*"Course Design W.ffi!tlt Y aio:kn , J Prinopies oJ COurse 1Jesi1(11 for lAn.g~m~ Te=king li-""t4t'**tlii.~~.II English Grammar #fia-~1! Biber, D et al Lm>gman Grammar "f Spoknt and 1\''ritten English I!;IJ X * ii- Hopper, P J -et al Di.crionary t7 ii" :;, !{ 3-iiHI:· Grammutical;=tirm $-A Bl.llloS!"m;.nn, H Routledge Dictionary of I anifUUge and Linguistics -)l"t~ii-T Cambridge S~JJ ~ Johnson K et aL F:"u:y[...]... investigating in this book are the resources that Enghsh has for creating texture lf a passage of English containing more than one sentence is perceived as a text, there will be certain linguistic features present in that passage which can be identified as comributing to its total unity and giving it texture Let us start with a simple and trivial example Suppose we find the following instructions in. .. has at 1.3 COHESION AND LINGUISTIC CONTEXT 19 his disposal This is a purely relational concept, and directionality comes into it only if one of the dements in the cohesive relation is BY rrs NATUJU! cohesive in that it is inherently 'pointing to • something else; in this case there is a Jogical dependence and hence a significant opposition IN T.HE between pointing hack (anaphora) and pointing forwards... we supply the grassy bank in our imagination, and the producer need not put one on the stage This is an essential clement in all imaginative writing It may be helpful here to draw attention to the distinction between cohesion as a relation in the system, and cohesion as a process in the text Cohesion' is defined as the set of possibilities that exist in the language for making text hang together: the... graphic (expression>) Meanings are realized (eoded) as forms, and forms are realized in turn (recoded) as expressions To put this in ev~day terminology, meaning is put into wording and wording into sound or writing: meaning ~ ~unding '/writing (the semantic system) (the lexicogrammatical system, grammar and vocabulary) (the phonological and orthographic systems) The popular term 'wording' refers to lexicogrammatical... topic unit The concept of cohesion is set up to account for relations in discourse~ but in rather a different way without the implication that there is some structural unit that is above the sentence Cohesion refers to the range of possibilities that exist for linking something with what has gone before Since this linking is achieved through relations in MEANING (we are excluding from consideration the... of uniting the two parts into a single orthographic sentence it does not imply any kind of structural relation between them The colon is used solely to signal the cataphora, this being one of its principal functions I8 lNTli.ODUCTION There remains one further possibility, namely that the information required for interpreting some element in the text is not to he found in the text at all, but in the... raining.- Then let's sray at home b Since it's raining let's stay at home Regardless of the presence or absence of a structurallinl:: the semantic relation that provides cohesi~ namely that ofcause, is the same in both For these reasons cohesion withln the :rentence need not be regarded as essentially a distinct phenomenon Cohesion is a general text-forming relation, or set of such relations~ certain... the instances in (a) or (b) has an an.aphoric sense: [I :4) a None but the brave deserve the fair b The pain in my bead cannot stifle the pain in my heart For the meaning of the see 2.4-2 below.) :1.1.3 Ties We need a term to refer to a single instance of cohesion, a term for one occurrence ofa pair ofcohesively related items This we shall call a TlB The rektion between them and six cooking appks in. .. creation of texture: that in which ONE ELliMl!NT IS INTERPRRTBD BY REFERENCE TO ANOTHER What cohesion has to do with is the way in which the meaning of the elements is interpreted Where the interpretation of any item in the discourse requires making reference to some other item in the discourse, there is cohesion Consider the example [I!I4] He said so This sentence is perfectly intdligible as it stands~... examples [I: 14] and [ 1: I5 ] In [I: 14] the items he and so contain in their meaning an explicit signal that the means of their interpretation is available somewhere in the environment Hearing or reading this sentence, we know that it links up with some other passage in which there is an indication of who 'he• is and what he said This is not the case with John or everything, neither of which necessarily ... cohesive in that it is inherently 'pointing to • something else; in this case there is a Jogical dependence and hence a significant opposition IN T.HE between pointing hack (anaphora) and pointing... Meanings are realized (eoded) as forms, and forms are realized in turn (recoded) as expressions To put this in ev~day terminology, meaning is put into wording and wording into sound or writing:... range of possibilities that exist for linking something with what has gone before Since this linking is achieved through relations in MEANING (we are excluding from consideration the effects of