Coherence and Cohesion in English Discourse

Demonstrative 
type
this
these
that
those
pron.
det.
pron.
det.
pron.
det.
pron.
det.
Raw No.
134 
624
28 
336
41
12
68
17
Norm. rate
1.4
6.9
0.3
3.7
0.5
0.1
0.7
0.2
Percentage
17.6% 82.3% 7.7% 92.3% 77.4% 22.5%
83.9
16.1%
Table 1-4: Frequency of demonstratives in the 
Applied Linguistics
 corpus
The pronominal use of 
this 
and
 these
is anaphoric. The demonstrative pronouns 
this 
and
 these
, which constitute more than 90 per cent of the occurrences of the 
proximal demonstratives, typically co-occur with copular verbs, thus linking 
evaluative characteristics to the subject such as 
this is an important discovery
in 
(8) and the heavily hedged 
These might be thought to be of marginal importance
in (9). The high frequency of occurrence of 
this 
and
 these
with discourse and 
mental verbs (e.g. 
suggest
, 
support
) in sentence initial subject position (8) 
partakes in the build-up of the argumentation especially in the discussion section 
of the articles. The referents of 
this
and 
these
are typically clauses, sentences, 
paragraphs or larger text components rather than noun phrases. It is this potential 
to create cohesive links between larger stretches of text and the following text 
that motivates the high rate of 
this
and 
these
in research articles, where they 
contribute to the construction of local cohesion. As (8) shows, pronominal 
demonstratives may be used repeatedly in this way even in adjacent sentences.
(8)
One particularly interesting finding made in this study is that different 
types of items elicit different types of CSs. This supports Poulisse’s finding 
that the nature of the task strongly influences the type of CSs adopted. 
This is an important discovery as it emphasizes the fact that, even though 
individuals’ cognitive styles appear to influence the approach they take to 
communication, they do not dictate this approach.
(AL/3 Discussion)

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23
(9)
Overall, it can be argued that there are three main options conventionally 
open to academic writers to perform overt dialogic interaction with their 
readers. One is commands initiated by the writer, which the reader-in-
the text obeys. These might be thought to be of marginal importance
, 
but Swales et al. (1998), in an investigation of imperatives in academic 
articles, show them to be comparatively frequent and used in complex 
ways. 
(AL4/ Discussion)
Most of the occurrences of 
this 
and
 these
as determiners are with deictic 
(metadiscoursal in Swales’s 2005 terminology) and shell nouns. The most frequent 
deictic nouns used with 
this
are 
paper
(34 occurrences), 
article
(22 occurrences) 
and 
study
(21). They are commonly used in the abstract, introduction and 
conclusion sections of research articles to organize the discourse at the macro-
level by constructing the perceptual accessibility of the text in the discourse 
world of writer and reader (cf. Elrich 1992) and thus contribute to the perception 
of coherence at the global level of discourse (10). When creating cohesive links 
at the local discourse level, 
this
refers to linguistic units or phenomena mentioned 
in the preceding clause or sentence, which is illustrated by 
this unit
and 
units of 
this type
in (10).
(10)
This paper was motivated by the need each of the three authors felt for 
a reliable and comprehensively defined unit to assist with the analysis of 
a variety of recordings of native and non-native speakers of English. We 
first discuss in very general terms the criteria according to which such 
a unit might be selected. Next, we examine the main categories of unit 
which have been adopted previously and provide a justification for the