Coherence and Cohesion in English Discourse

coherence
text-internal relations
⇓
(incomplete) 
cohesion
⇓
top-down strategy
↕
inference
⇓
bottom-up strategy
↕
integration
Figure 4-1 
Openness in text
 (adapted from W. van Peer 1989: 279)
The process of reading a text involves engaging in top-down and bottom-up 
processing simultaneously.
Another workable conception in cognitive stylistics, often referred to 
as schema theory, aims at exploration of how readers make use of their pre-
existing background knowledge and how they awaken their real-life schematic 
knowledge and bring it to the process of interpreting literary texts. The problems 

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of packaging knowledge of the world and storing it in the memory for further 
use, for example in interpretation of (literary) texts, are captured in a series of 
stages where particular elements of knowledge are identified and termed as 
schema, scripts and frame. We have discussed frame theory and its application 
in stylistic analysis in our earlier works (cf. Miššíková 2007, 2009) yet a brief 
comment on triggering schemas is relevant here. Readers generate images of 
fictional worlds based on their perception of various cues provided in a text. 
These cues function as triggers which activate aspects of the readers pre-existing 
background knowledge of the real world as they read. This then allows them 
to construct mental representations of the world of the text (cf. Jeffries and 
McIntyre 2010: 127). More specifically, so-called headers can be identified in 
the following four types: precondition headers, instrumental headers, locale 
headers and internal conceptualisation headers (ibid.: 129). In Example (5), two 
initial headers (following references to locations) can be identified as triggering 
of a basic VISITOR/RESIDENT INTERVIEW script. This is further specified 
by additional headers. Once we recognise two or more headers we have arrived 
at triggering of a particular schema; two and more headers instantiate a schema 
(Jeffries and McIntyre 2010: 129). The final schema we arrive at is ‘a foreign 
visitor being questioned by the local resident in a guesthouse’.
(5)
 ‘A starburst briefly filled the screen, indicating an internal of adverts.’
…
He was delighted to find that I was American. ‘I’ve always wanted to see 
America,’ he said. ‘Tell me, do you have Woolworth’s there?’
Well, actually, Woolworth’s is American.´
‘You don’t say!’ he said. ‘Did you hear that, Colonel? Woolworth’s is 
American.’ The colonel seemed unmoved by this intelligence. ‘And what 
about cornflakes?’
‘I beg your pardon?’ 
(BB: 23)
References to locations where the script is likely to be activated can be seen 
as locale headers, such as ‘A starburst briefly filled the screen, indicating an 
internal of adverts’, a triggering of a LOUNGE (or TV room) script. The sentence 
‘He was delighted to find that I was American’ is a precondition header 
for the 
triggering of a VISITOR/RESIDENT INTERVIEW script. The invocation of 
another script by particular action such as ‘Did you hear that, Colonel?’ can be 
seen as an instrumental header triggering a more specific script: FOREIGNER/
LOCAL RESIDENT CONVERSATION. All references to actions and roles from 
the script can be termed as internal conceptualization headers, such as comments 
on other participants, e.g. ‘The colonel seemed unmoved by this intelligence’ and 
their utterances, e.g. ‘You don’t say!’, ‘I beg your pardon?’ Summing up, we have 

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identified four types of headers triggering particular scripts which instantiate 
a specific schema. To explain the reader’s capacity for confusing elements of 
various (more or less distinct) schemas, a higher form of knowledge organization 
has been suggested – a superordinate schema called scene (cf. Schank 1982).