This post includes a description of Coherence and Cohesion along with an explanation of grammatical cohesive devices and also tells about the coherence and cohesion meaning in discourse.
Sample Paragraph (Non-coherent)
Yesterday, I went to a party. The child was standing there. A man was standing in the middle of the road. Someone shouted, help, help, help. All people gathered in front of my house and I was afraid. People call the child foolish and I don’t like such personal statements. A large gathering of my relatives was waiting at the party for me. No one is eating healthy food and as a result, diseases are increasing day by day.
Sample Paragraph (Coherent)
Yesterday, I went to a party. A large gathering of my relatives was waiting at the party for me. A man was standing in the middle of the road. Someone shouted, help, help, help. All people gathered in front of my house and I was afraid. The child was standing there. People called the child foolish and I didn’t like such personal statements.
Cohesion and Coherence
Coherence is defined as the quality of being logical, consistent, and able to be understood. Imagine coherence as a building (It’s an analogy, go with it).
Cohesion on the other hand refers to the act of forming a whole unit. It is effectively a subset of coherence. Picture cohesion as the bricks and cement that make up the building.
The analogy of bricks and cement
Bricks and cement can be put together to create any form of structure. However, it is only when they are laid together properly that they form a building. Similarly, a text will be cohesive if cohesive ties are used however it will only be coherent if the cohesive ties are used appropriately to create meaning.
You can have cohesion without coherence but you cannot have coherence without cohesion. The picture does not make sense unless the correct pieces are placed in the correct order, even if certain pieces may be the same size and shape.
“I bought some hummus to eat with celery. Green vegetables can boost your metabolism. The Australian Greens is a political party. I couldn’t decide what to wear to the new year’s party.”
In the example above, there are lexical links from one sentence to the next; cohesive ties are used to join the sentences. There is evidence of lexical repetition, ‘green’ ‘party’, and collocations, ‘new years’.
However, this string of sentences does not make any sense; there is no binding semantic link. This is an example of cohesion without coherence.
What is Cohesion?
Cohesion refers to the relationship between items in a text such as words, phrases, and clauses, and other items such as pronouns, nouns, and conjunctions.
Cohesion is a term in linguistics that refers to how the structure and content of a sentence or text are linked together to create meaning. It needs to be achieved in a sentence, within a paragraph, and across paragraphs for a text to make sense.
It is the semantic relation between one element and another in a text (Halliday & Hasan, 1976).
Examples of Cohesion:
Cohesion means sticking together.
If your group of friends heads to the lunchroom as a team and sits all together, you’re demonstrating strong cohesion.
Cohesion is a word that comes to us through physics, where cohesion describes particles that are the same and tend to stick together — water molecules, for example.
Outside of physics, cohesion describes unity among parts and is something to be sought after. A team that has good cohesion is often a team that wins.
Cohesion occurs when the interpretation of one item depends on the other, i.e. one item presupposes the other (Halliday & Hasan, 1976).
For instance in the following text:
Amy went to the party. She sat with Sara.
The interpretation of the item “she” depends on the lexical item Amy.
Therefore, the text is considered cohesive because we cannot understand the meaning of “she” unless Amy exists in the text.
Types of Cohesion:
Cohesion is not only concerned with grammar, but also with vocabulary.
There are two types of cohesion:
- Grammatical Cohesion (Deals with Grammar)
- Lexical Cohesion (Deals with Vocabulary)1.
1. Grammatical Cohesion:
Grammatical Cohesion can be achieved in the following Four ways.
- References
- Substitution
- Conjunctions
- Elipsis
References:
Reference can be identified as the situation in which one element cannot be semantically interpreted unless it is referred to another element in the text.
Pronouns, articles, demonstratives, and comparatives are used as referring devices to refer to items in linguistic or situational texts.
For example,
“Sara lives in a beautiful house. She lives there with her family.”
(She, there, and her can be interpreted only from Sara)
A table of pronouns is given below for your understanding:
| Subject | Object | Possessive (Determiner) |
Also known as Genitive (Independant) |
Reflexive and Intensive |
| I | Me | My | Mine | Myself |
| You | You | Your | Yours | Yourself |
| He | Him | His | His | Himself |
| She | Her | Her | Hers | Herself |
| It | It | Its | Its | Itself |
| We | Us | Our | Ours | Ourselves |
| You | You | Your | Yours | Yourselves |
| They | Them | Their | Theirs | Themselves |
Articles:
Articles are divided into two types.
1. Definite (The)
2. Indefinite (A, An)
Examples
I saw an old man. The man was walking on the road.
Demonstratives (Adjectives, Pronouns):
This, That, These and Those are demonstratives.
Demonstrative Adjectives
This bag needs repair.
That girl makes noise.
These students called the police.
Those cats drink milk.
(In the above examples the highlighted words are demonstrative adjectives).
This is a ball.
That is a girl.
These are animals.
Those are toys.
(In the above examples, the highlighted words are demonstrative pronouns)
Finally, let’s look at a list of cohesive devices, divided by type. This is not an exhaustive list, of course. It is just a small sample of the vast array of cohesive devices that exist. However, maybe you will find it useful.
| Conjunctive adverbs | Subordinating conjunctions | Coordinating conjunctions |
| however | because | for |
| therefore | although | and |
| meanwhile | while | nor |
| as such | if | but |
| on the one hand | despite | or |
| for example | in spite of | yet |
| in conclusion | when | so |
