Coherence and Cohesion in English Discourse

7 Conclusions
With regard to the results discussed and exemplified above, it can now be 
postulated that semantic relations usually considered most informative of all 
that can hold between segments of discourse are frequently expressed by certain 
overt guiding signals such as conjuncts in the RAs written by both native and 
Czech speakers of English included in the analysis. However, Czech researches 
often find it necessary to express apposition in even more cases than contrast/
concession; this tendency can be caused by non-native writers’ need to clarify 
and exemplify their arguments and enable coherent interpretation so that they 
can feel more confident and enhance their credibility in their 
academic discourse 
community.
The conjuncts considered most typical of all academic written discourse, i.e. 
however, thus, therefore
and 
for example
(Biber et al. 1999), are commonly used 

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by all authors of the RAs selected for the investigation. In addition, Czech writers 
frequently apply conjuncts expressing apposition (
i.e., e.g.
and 
namely
) and 
native speakers of English resort to the appositive 
e.g.
and resultive/inferential 
then
not only to exemplify their arguments and support their reasoning, but also 
to enhance the interaction and dialogue between the author of the text and the 
prospective reader(s) on the one hand and on the other those between the author 
and the relevant previous research including their own previous standpoints.
As regards the assumption that academic texts written by native speakers 
of English are more interactive and dialogic, thus comprising a higher number 
of conjuncts, this has been verified only partly, notably with the category of 
contrast/concession. It must be stated that Czech writers in general apply more 
conjuncts in their RAs (12.28 x 8.80) in particular when expressing apposition 
and listing, i.e. the two semantic categories with which they use conjuncts with 
double the frequency of occurrence when compared to that of native speakers 
of English. With regard to the most important function of appositive and listing 
conjuncts it can now be concluded that Czech authors use conjuncts above all 
to support their argumentation with exemplifications and reformulations and to 
show the prospective reader(s) how the text is organized and how to interpret it 
in a way coherent with the author’s communicative goals.
As far as the individual types of conjuncts are concerned, there is only minor 
cross-cultural variation in the RAs included in my analysis, notably in the choice 
of the most frequent types of conjuncts within each semantic category and also 
in the frequency rates of the semantic classes as a whole that are most typical 
of the two corpora, which is apposition in the texts written by Czech authors 
and contrast/concession in those by native speakers. However, this variation can 
also result from the differences in particular writers’ styles (e.g. a preference 
for the use of 
for example
rather than 
for instance
or 
thus
rather than 
therefore
), 
the topics under examination (e.g. some requiring frequent exemplification 
and thus appositive conjuncts such as 
i.e.
and 
namely
) and individual writers’ 
preferences influenced by previous academic schooling and mother-tongue 
writing conventions (e.g. the frequent use of 
on the other hand
, probably under 
the influence of a similar phrase in the Czech language).