Coherence and Cohesion in English Discourse

1 Introduction
Academic discourse refers to the use of language for the conveyance of 
knowledge in academic settings. Scholars involved in academic interaction 
strive to position their work in the context of previous disciplinary knowledge 
and to persuade their peers and the general audience of the relevance, validity 
and novelty of their claims. In order to achieve this, the authors endeavour to 
construct a coherent discourse which represents themselves and their research as 
a credible source of knowledge while creating a dialogic space for the negotiation 
and acceptance by their discourse community of the suggested extension of 
disciplinary knowledge.
Due to the potential of the written mode to transcend constraints of time 
and space, it is typically considered to be the leading form of academic 
communication. It is therefore not surprising that most previous studies 
describing the features of academic discourse have focused on written academic 
genres, such as research articles, textbooks, dissertations and reviews (e.g. 
Biber et al. 1999, Hewings 2001, 2006, Hyland 2001, 2002, 2005, 2010, Swales 

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1990, 2004, Tanskanen 2006). When involved in written interaction the writer 
can carefully plan and revise his/her text and the reader can re-read the text to 
achieve sufficient understanding. However, the ‘split’ discourse context (Fowler 
1986: 87) and the related lack of reciprocal management of the discourse 
(Seidlhofer and Widdowson 1997: 209) deprives the writer of the possibility of 
finding out whether the coherence the interactants have derived from the text 
overlaps sufficiently, i.e. whether the reader has understood the text in the way 
intended by the writer. In order to process written discourse successfully, the 
reader has to grasp the meaning encoded in different textual components and 
to determine and interpret the relations holding between them. Obviously, in 
academic discourse one of the most important factors for adequate discourse 
comprehension is the scope of shared disciplinary knowledge. In addition, the 
writer endeavours to anticipate the reader’s reaction and to use different signals 
and strategies limiting the range of possible interpretations and guiding the reader 
towards an understanding of the discourse which matches as much as possible 
the one intended by the author.
This study explores the role of indexical devices in establishing cohesive 
relations in written academic discourse. It considers in particular the potential 
of personal pronouns and demonstratives to create cohesive links based on 
anaphoric and deictic reference and thus to foster the construal of discourse 
coherence by contributing to discourse topic organization and the perception of 
continuity of referents.