Coherence and Cohesion in English Discourse

Figure 6-1: A model for analysis of discourse coherence
Ideational plane of discourse
1. Topic continuity
a. referents
b. action frames
c. time
d. location 
e. logical relations
f. topic shift markers
2. Patterns of thematic progression 
3. Logical relations holding between discourse segments
4. Generic structure
Interpersonal plane of discourse
1. Participants’ relationship
a. participants’ identities
b. speaker/hearer (writer/reader) alignment towards each other
2 For a detailed discussion of the interplay of ideational, interpersonal and textual meaning in the 
perception of discourse coherence, cf. Dontcheva-Navratilova (2012).

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c. politeness strategies
2. Interaction 
a. type of interaction (monologic/dialogic/mixed; prepared/spontaneous)
b. exchange structure 
i. adjacency pairs
ii. preference structure
3. Evaluation
a. categorization of participants, actions and events (distance/solidarity)
b. expressing opinion and judgement (degrees of certainty, agreement/ 
disagreement)
c. averral/attribution of opinion/ judgement
d.
expressing subjectivity and emotions (positive/negative attitude, 
degree of intensity)
Textual plane of discourse
1. Lexical cohesion
a. reiteration
b. collocation
2. 
Grammatical cohesion
a. reference
b. substitution and ellipsis
c. discourse markers and conjunctives
a. structural parallelism, theme-rheme articulation
On the ideational plane, coherence is derived from the perception of continuity 
and interdependence of ideational meanings conveyed in the text and inferred 
by the interactant on the basis of mental models activated during discourse 
processing (van Dijk and Kintsch 1983, Givón 1995, 2001). The most salient 
aspects of ideational coherence are continuity of discourse topic and logical 
relations holding between segments of discourse. The organization of discourse 
content in relation to a discourse topic – often called ‘topical’ or ‘propositional’ 
coherence (cf. Giora 1985, 1997, Givón 1995, 2001, Gernsbacher 1997) – is 
traceable on the basis of continuity of referents, action frames, time, location and 
logical relations holding between entities and actions in the mental representation 
of the text. It should be noted that since the interpretation of reference and spatio-
temporal markers is pragmatically determined, it is dependent on the shared 
background knowledge of the interactants and their experience in discourse 
processing (cf. e.g. van Dijk 1997, Miššíková 2005). Obviously, the perception 
of discourse coherence is fostered by cohesion relations as they facilitate the 
construction of continuity of occurrences of conceptual content items in discourse 
and make explicit logical relations holding between events and phenomena 

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represented in discourse. The relevance of utterance themes to discourse topic 
at paragraph, discourse segment, and global level is conveyed by patterns of 
thematic progression (linear, continuous theme and derived theme) (Daneš 1974, 
1995). A change in the type of thematic progression, together with sematic shift 
markers, such as changes of time or place or introduction of new referents, may 
indicate topic boundaries. Coherence at transition points in discourse may be 
fostered by formal topic-shift markers, such as adverbial linkers. Since discourse 
organization may be 
genre-specific, coherence may also be derived on the basis 
of the function of a rhetorical move in the generic structure even in cases when 
the relevance of the paragraph/discourse segment topic to the global discourse 
topic is indirect.
The perception of coherence on the interpersonal plane is partially dependent 
on the type of interaction in which the participants are involved. Thus in 
dialogic spoken interaction, which presupposes shared pragmatic context of 
communication, all-participants involvement in discourse production and 
collaborative negotiation of meaning and management of discourse, interactional 
coherence stems to a large extent from the continuity of communicative acts, 
which can be analysed on the basis of adjacency pairs and preference structure. 
Written interaction comprises a production stage, during which the author tries to 
anticipate the implied readers’ expectations and reactions and interacts with the 
audience by constructing a discourse world based on mental representations, and 
an interpretation stage, during which the reader processes the discourse taking 
into consideration the collaborative efforts of the writer and looking for their 
signals in the text. Therefore, in written monologic discourse the importance 
of interaction structure may be seen as to a large extent given by generic 
conventions (cf. Hoey 2001). In all kinds of discourse, however, the perception 
of coherence on the interpersonal plane stems from the consistent representation 
of participants’ identities and mutual relationships, and is further enhanced by 
coherent construction and interpretation of evaluative meanings, related to the 
continuity of the interactants’ attitudes and feelings towards the entities and 
phenomena about which they are talking or writing. These aspects of interpersonal 
coherence are related to the establishment of contact and continuous appeal to 
the interlocutor and/or the audience realized by the use of forms of address, 
markers of social dialect and politeness, various lexical resources signalling 
group affiliation, 
evaluation of social actors, actions and events, and structures 
attributing opinions and judgments to the speaker/writer or a third party (cf. van 
Leeuwen 1996, Hunston and Thompson 1999, Martin and White 2005). 
Coherence on the textual plane is associated primarily with the use of cohesive 
devices which guide the listener/reader towards a discourse interpretation 
intended by the speaker/writer. In agreement with Halliday (1981), cohesion 
is seen here as instrumental to the perception of coherence on the ideational 

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and interpersonal planes of discourse. Operating on both the global and local 
coherence levels, cohesive devices facilitate the establishment of lexical 
and grammatical links between parts of the text and between the text and its 
context. Within the present approach, grammatical and lexical mechanisms for 
establishing cohesion relations are regarded as interdependent. The categorization 
of grammatical cohesive means generally follows Halliday and Hasan’s (1989) 
framework, although, in agreement with Cornish’s (2008) cognitive approach, 
reference interpretation is extended to encompass both deictic and anaphoric 
reference, since they are regarded as referring directly to mental representations 
and not to the occurrence of lexical or grammatical items in the text. The 
interpretation of lexical cohesion relations is seen as a collaborative achievement 
of the interactants which is dependent on their background knowledge through 
the knowledge of routines, activity types and complex schemata motivated 
socially, culturally and ideologically (Tanskanen 2006); thus it is associated with 
evaluation and interpersonal coherence. By participating in the build-up of local 
or global cohesive chains, lexical and grammatical cohesive means help maintain 
the availability of referents, action and events in the mental representations of the 
interactants, while by establishing their referents as thematic across larger parts 
of the text, cohesive chains indicate the boundaries of global and local topical 
segments. The cohesive role of discourse markers to indicate discourse topic 
shifts and to make explicit logical relations holding in the unfolding discourse 
enhances the perception of ideational coherence (cf. Povolná 2010).
The above discussion of aspects of coherence suggests that the perception 
of coherence stems from the interplay of meanings derived on all planes of 
discourse. When constructing a discourse world the speaker/writer projects 
into the discourse his/her culturally, experientially and ideologically-biased 
judgements and attitudes and assigns status and value to actors, events and 
actions related to them. Thus ideational and interpersonal meanings can be 
seen as contributing jointly to the efforts of the speaker/writer to impose his/
her ideological perspective and to persuade the listener/reader to accept the 
suggested perception of discourse coherence. The listener/reader, however, may 
not understand or accept the point of view of the speaker/writer and construct a 
different discourse world which agrees with the culturally-, experientially- and 
ideologically-biased point of view of the listener/reader, but diverges from the 
discourse interpretation intended by the speaker/writer.