Acknowledgement I could not have completed my graduation thesis without the enthusiastic help and encouragement of my teachers, my family as well as my friends. First, I would like to express my deep gratitude to my supervisor: Mrs Nguyen Thi Van Lam,M.A whose useful ideas, advices, and encouragement have helped me shape and complete my thesis. Second, I would also like to thank all of the teachers in the foreign language department for their lectures on the area which enable me to gain a lot of theoretical as well as practical knowledge. Finally, I am particularly grateful to my parents and my friends for their encouragements and spiritual support during my process of writing the thesis. Vinh, summer, 2007 Phạm Thi Thanh Xu©n 1 LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS Vs : versus AR : anaphoric reference CR : cataphoric reference DR : demonstrative reference PR : personal reference COR : comparative reference SC : single conjunction PC : phrasal conjunction CC : clausal conjunction AVC : adversative conjunction ADC : additive conjunction TPC : temporal conjunction CSC : causal conjunction 2 TABLE OF CONTENTS Acknowledgement Abbreviations Table of contents Part I: Introduction 1. Rationale of the Study 1 2. Aims of the Study .2 3. Scope of the Study .2 4. Method the Study .3 5. Deign of the Study .3 Part II: Development Chapter 1: Theoretical background 1.1 Text .4 1.2 Theory of Discourse .4 1.3 Discourse Versus Text .5 1.4 The Concept of Cohesion .5 1.5 Cohesion and Coherence 6 1.6 Types of Cohesive Devices 7 1.7 Grammatical Cohesion .8 1.7.1 Reference 8 1.7.1.1. Exphoric reference 8 1.7.1.2. Endophoric reference 9 1.7.1.3. Personal, Demonstrative and Comparative reference 10 1.8. Substitution 12 1.8.1. Nominal Substitution .12 1.8.2. Verbal Substitution .13 1.8.3. Clausal Substitution .13 1.9. Ellipsis .15 1.9.1. Nominal Ellipsis .16 1.9.2. Verbal Ellipsis 16 1.9.3. Clausal Ellipsis .17 1.10. Conjunction .17 1.11. Summary .19 3 CHAPTER 2: AN ANALYSIS OF GRAMMATICAL COHESION MANIFESTED IN NEWSPAPER ARTICLES RELATING TO THE TOPIC: NUCLEAR ISSUE IN NORTH KOREA AND IRAN 2.1. Newspaper Properties 20 2.1.1. The Concept of Newspaper 20 2.1.2. The Content of Newspaper 20 2.1.3. Types of Newspaper .20 2.1.4. Circulation and Readership 21 2.1.5. Advertising .21 2.2. General Information about the Material Selected .22 2.3. Grammatical Cohesion Seen as its Types .23 2.3.1. Reference 23 2.3.1.1. Endophoric Reference .23 2.3.1.2. Personal, Demonstrative, and Comparative Reference 26 2.3.2. Substitution .33 2.3.3. Ellipsis 35 2.3.4. Conjunction 36 Chapter 3: Discussion and Implication 3.1. Dicussion .41 3.2. Some Implications for English Teaching and Learning .42 Part III: Conclusion .45 References Appendix 4 PART I: INTRODUCTION 1. Rationale of the Study When reading a text, the first impression that makes readers understand its content is the feeling that it hangs together. This way is implemented by various linguistic devices including grammatical and lexical ones. Hoey, cited in Nunan (1993), when mentioning to lexical cohesion, claims that “lexical cohesion is the single most important form of cohesion, accounting for something like 40% of cohesion ties in text”. The other that constitutes 60% is grammatical devices effectively provide a measure of the cohesiveness of the text. Therefore, grammatical cohesion (reference, ellipsis, substitution and conjunction) greatly contributes significant part in creating coherence of discourse. Obtaining a sufficient awareness of the vivid existence of grammatical cohesion as a cohesive device, of its significant role in generating textual coherence as well as proper ways in which it is used by native speakers (writers) can make a helpful contribution to teaching and learning English. However, to my best knowledge, learners particularly meet the obstacles of recognising the use of these grammatical devices when producing and receiving English. Thus, based on this phenomenon, an analysis of using grammatical cohesion is intended to be an effort to contribute to helping learners. The second reason for conducting the present research originates from the fact that newspaper articles are said to be a useful and typical demonstration of grammatical as well as lexical cohesion usage where journalists often attempt to convey as much sufficient information as possible within the limit of an article. Moreover, newspaper, nowadays, has become one of the most popular and powerful means of communication and plays a displaceable part in man’s life. It is a place where language unexceptionally manifests it own features. Being interested in grammatical cohesion, we find it very interesting and appropriate also, to apply related theories in to VietNam News newspaper- one of the first and the most familiar newspaper written in English in Viet Nam - on the topic nuclear issue in North Korea and Iran – the hottest and prominent affair of the world now. All above reasons are the driving force that has inspired us to investigate and decide to choose “An Analysis of Grammatical Cohesion Manifested in Newspaper Articles Relating to the Topic Nuclear Issue in North Korea and Iran” as the theme of the thesis. 5 It is hoped that the study is a contribution to English teaching and leaning, and a good source of reference for those who are interested in the area. 2. Aims of the Study Originating from the above reasons, this graduation paper is aimed at: - Emphasizing the important role of grammatical cohesion in creating textual coherence. - Giving some statistics and descriptions of grammatical cohesion in newspaper articles. - Studying the reasons leading to the different degrees of fondness in different types of grammatical cohesion. - Most importantly, identifying some implications in the hope of helping learners of English to improve their competence to analyse and recognize different types of grammatical cohesion in texts. 3. Scope of the Study Within the scope of this thesis, a full catalogue of grammatical cohesion is of too great a subject to deal with. For the time and resource constraints as well as the limited size of the thesis, touching all of the features and details of grammatical cohesion seems inappropriate and impossible as well. Thus, this paper wishes to go into the analysis of some following prominent points. First, the research deals with four types of grammatical cohesion indicated by Halliday and Hasan (1976) including reference, substitution, ellipsis and conjunction, other types shown by other writers or lexical cohesion are out of the scope of the thesis. Second, the practical scope of this study is analysis of grammatical cohesion. The source of material is newspaper articles taken from VietNam News – the very popular and typical newspaper written in English in VietNam. The topic chosen for analysis is nuclear issue in North Korea and Iran - an affair that produces conflict and argument among the nations in the world. Perhaps, there is no need to say that it is seen as the hottest and the most controversial problem of the world current affair. The issue is still believed to be unfinished up to the day the material collection for this study is completed. It has greatly been drawing the attention of nations as well as people all over the world. 6 4. Methods of the Study Within the small scope of this graduation thesis, so to achieve the above- mentioned aims, the following steps have been applied: - Collecting newspaper articles relating to the topic: nuclear issue in North Korea and Iran from the online VietNam News. - Finding out the examples containing different types of grammatical cohesion. - Analysing some typical examples of each type. - Reaching some conclusions on the subject-matter under investigation and accordingly giving necessary comments. 5. Design of the Study The research paper includes three main parts: the first part, Introduction deals with the rationale, aims, scope, methods, and design of the thesis. The second part, Development demonstrates the content of the thesis which consists of three chapters: Chapter I provides the theoretical background – an in-depth review of the relevant literature related to the issue under investigation. Specifically, a review of theory related to grammatical cohesion as well as its types is illustrated. Chapter II deals with an analysis of grammatical cohesion manifested in newspaper articles relating to the topic: nuclear issue in North Korea and Iran. Here, concrete statistics about the use of different types of grammatical cohesion in the articles is calculated and provided. Chapter III summarizes major findings and suggests some implications for English teaching and learning. Exercises for application are also given The final part, Conclusion reviews what has been discussed in the content of the thesis and points out some suggestions for further study. 7 PART II: DEVELOPMENT CHAPTER I: THEORETICAL BACKGROUND 1.1. Text There are many viewpoints around the term “text”. Originally, it acquires its interpretation as a type of linguistic unit larger than the sentence. Its appearance can be regarded as the dissatisfactions on the traditional linguist who had seen the sentence being the largest unit to be studied. In the long study of cohesion in English (Halliday and Hasan, 1976) state “a text is a unit of language in use. It is not a grammatical unit, like a clause or a sentence and it is not defined by its size”. Brown and Yule (1983: 6) see text as “the verbal record of a communicative act” or Widdowson (1984:100) claims that: “text is the linguistic product of a communicative process”. Obviously, there are many ways to define “text” and its conception seems to be still under discussion. In this study, we use the definition given by Haliday and Hasan (1976:1) “a text is a unit of language in use…. a text is best regarded as a semantic unit: a unit not of form but of meaning” being the best to adopt. 1.2. Theory of Discourse Since the time Discourse Analysis came into being as a branch of linguistics, the term “discourse” has been defined in different ways. A discourse, according to Crystal (1992:25) is “a continuous stretch of (especially spoken) language larger than a sentence, often constituting a coherent unit such as a sermon, argument, joke or narrative. Johnstone (2002: 2) claims “discourse usually means actual instances of communication in the medium of language”. Cook (1997: 39) gives an easy-to- understand definition of discourse as "stretches of language perceived to be meaningful, unified and purposive. Being similar to the concept of text, the definition of discourse is still controversial. In this thesis, the notion by Nunan (1993) seeing “discourse as a stretch of language consisting of several sentences perceived as being related in some ways, in terms of the ideas they share and in terms of the jobs they perform within discourse” seems to be the most acceptable. 8 1.3. Discourse Versus Text Actually, there is still disagreement about the meaning of these two terms: “discourse” and “text”. For some linguists, the terms seem to be used almost interchangeably as in Nunan (1995:1) indicates “A text, or a discourse, is a stretch of language that may be longer than a sentence” However, some other writers draw a clear distinction between them. Widdowon (1984) is probably one of the first who makes a very explicit distinction. According to him, text typically has cohesion whereas discourse has coherence, which can be illustrated by the following example. A: Did you vote Labor or Liberal, Peter? B: I did not register, mate. Although there is no formal link between A and B, the listener can infer that Peter did not vote because he did not register. As in Widdowson (1984: 100), the difference and the interrelationships between the two can be summarized: Discourse is a communicative process by means of interaction. Its situational outcome is a change in a state of affairs: information is conveyed, intentions made clear, its linguistic product is text. Other acclamations of some linguists are also similar to Widdowson’s viewpoint, i. e, discourse is language in action (or interaction) while a text is the written record of that interaction. It is obvious that this view sees discourse as bringing together language, the individuals producing the language and the context within which the language is used. On the other hand, other linguistics tend to avoid using the term “discourse” altogether, and accept the term “text” for all recorded instances of language in use. This study supports the distinction indicated by Salkie (1993): “the term text is used to refer to any written record of a communicative event whereas the term discourse refers to the interpretation of the communicative event in context”. The event itself can be oral language (a sermon, a casual conversation, a shopping transaction) or written language (a poem, a newspaper advertisement, a wall poster, etc). 1.4. The Concept of Cohesion Cohesion is easy to recognize but the way of seeing it is not absolutely similar among researchers. However, they all agree that cohesion is very necessary in teaching and learning language. 9 Halliday and Hasan (1976: 4) in their long study of cohesion in English define cohesion as “a semantic one: it refers to the relations of meaning that exist within the text and that define it as a text”. Obviously, according to them the primary determinant of whether a set of sentences do or do not constitute a text depends on cohesive relationship between the sentences which create texture. The texture is provided by cohesive relationships. Halliday and Hasan (1976: 4) also suggest Cohesion occurs where the interpretation of some elements in the discourse is dependent on that of another. The one presupposes the other, in the sense that it cannot be effectively decoded except by resource to it. When this happens a relation of cohesion is set up, and the two elements, the presupposing and the presupposed, are thereby at least potentially integrated in to a text. This explanation can be best accounted for by the following example: Put these books on the table. They are very interesting. We see that “they” in the second sentence refers back to the “these books” in the first sentence. This anaphoric function of “they” gives cohesion to the two sentences which constitutes a text. Cohesion is much involved, but not coincided, with another notion known as coherence. 1.5. Cohesion and Coherence Nunan (1993:116) clearly indicates the difference between cohesion and coherence: “Coherence is the extent to which discourse is perceived to hang together rather than a set of unrelated sentences or utterances and cohesion is formal links showing the relationships among clause and among sentences in discourse”. Coherence, obviously, is concerned with the feeling that the text hangs together or the type of rhetorical relationship that underlines text. Cohesion is something invisible and attributed to the creation of the addressee’s mind, very often with the assistance of cohesion whereas cohesion occurs visibly in discourse but only serves as signals, guides or clues to coherence. Coherence often depends on the common shared background knowledge (schemata), implication or inference. The following short dialogue may provide an illustration. A. Shall we go out for a cup of coffee? B. My friend is visiting me. 10 . numerative (N), Epithet (E), classifier (C), Quantifier (Q). The deictic is normally a determiner, the numerative, or other quantifiers, the epithet is an adjective. into 3 types: nominal, verbal and clausal substitution. McCarthy (1991: 45) strongly agrees with Halliday and Hansan “Substitution is similar to ellipsis,