Cambridge Grammar of English Hardback with cd-rom a comprehensive Guide

COHESION AND COHERENCE

124

Cohesion refers to the grammatical and lexical means by which written sentences

and speakers’ utterances are joined together to make texts. A text may be written

or spoken, and spoken texts are typically constructed by more than one person. 

A text is cohesive if, as a whole, the sentences and spoken utterances are

semantically linked and consistent. A random set of unconnected sentences or

spoken utterances just thrown together will probably not be cohesive; readers and

listeners will not be able to see links between each sentence/utterance.

The coherence of a text depends on more than its lexical or grammatical

properties. A text is coherent if its semantic and pragmatic meanings make sense

in its real-world context to readers/listeners. Coherence depends on the

reader/listener being able to interpret the message in relation to its context. 

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Coherence depends partly on the way that a writer or speaker assumes

knowledge of the world and of the context on the part of readers or listeners, and

partly on what sorts of clues and signals the writer/speaker puts into the text.

Such clues and signals include the linguistic items which provide cohesive links

between sentences, as exemplified in 123, above. 

Cohesion is largely a grammatical property of texts, but lexis can also play a

part in linking sentences (

Û

the text extract in 123 above

). For example:

I went to the dentist. I was nervous. I don’t like injections.

Among these sentences there is grammatical cohesion which results from the

parallel sequence of personal pronouns and past tenses, but the text coheres

because of our knowledge that dentists administer pain-killing injections before

dental treatment and that these can be painful and make some patients nervous.

Thus the lexical items dentist, nervous and injections are linked coherently

through semantic associations made by the reader.

Likewise, punctuation and the layout of the text can indicate how it should

cohere.

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506 Appendix: Punctuation

In this chapter the emphasis is on the grammar of texts and the part played by

grammar in achieving textual coherence.