Introducing English Linguistics

and
I lived with him for a year and went to Australia. But something
happened. And I don’t this is the big thing I don’t know. I felt we had to
break up and that we just couldn’t stay together and sort of our sex life
disappeared and for years we were just completely platonic.
(ICE-GB-S1A–050–5–10)
In written registers, such uses of and would not occur, since writers have
the opportunity to more carefully plan what they are going to write
next.
Exemplification is another kind of additive relationship. Expressions
such as for instance or for example indicate that a specific example of some
previously mentioned general point is forthcoming. In the example
below, for instance introduces an example of how the Volga provinces dif-
fered from other parts of Russia:
In general, conditions of land tenure, communal arrangements, and cultur-
al traditions differed considerably in the Volga provinces from those in the
West and the centre of European Russi. For instance, members of Volga
communes were apt to be more outward-looking than those in Kursk
guberniia because of their wider market ties and better transport facilities.
(BNC A64 1015)
Adversative relationships are marked by the coordinating conjunction
but and other expressions such as however, instead, and in contrast that serve
to mark some kind of difference or contrast between sections of a text.
Towards the end of the excerpt below, however indicates that there are two
views on postmodernism: that it is either a “break from modernism” or a
“continuation of ” it:
Some theorists have thought about postmodernism as a kind of radical
break from modernism, so a radical shift from, the kind of, sort of stylistic,
The structure of English texts
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and theoretical example set by somebody like Mies van der Rohe. Others
however
argue that it’s merely a continuation of modernism. 
(MICASE LEL320JU147)
Causal and temporal relationships are marked, respectively, by expres-
sions such as therefore, as a result, and so, and first, finally, and then. Because
the passage below is a narrative, the three occurrences of then mark the pro-
gression of time in the story. In addition, so in the third text unit indicates
that because two women were sitting and available, the individual being
referred to decided to walk up to one of them and begin talking to her.
<$C> <#> He was sitting there there were two guys sitting at a table right
where you are <#> And then these two women are sitting here <#> So uh
he comes over there and is talking with that woman <#> I don’t know
about what but then like ten minutes later she and her friend are over
at their table <#> And then twenty minutes later they were kinda like all
over each other <#> You know <#> kissing et cetera et cetera 
(SBCSAE)
So is a highly informal marker of causation. In more formal texts, therefore
or as a result would be used instead.
Summary
Although definitions of a text will vary, most linguists would agree
that for a text to achieve coherence, it must exhibit unity of structure
and unity of texture: it must have a clearly identifiable beginning,
middle, and end, and the clauses within it must be linked together by
various cohesive devices. While it is possible, as the next chapter will
demonstrate, to offer a precise definition of a sentence, how texts
attain structural and textural unity is subject to considerably more
variation. In both open and closed registers, speakers and writers will
ensure that the texts they create have textural unity by appropriately
placing new and given information; using various constructions to add
emphasis where necessary; and drawing upon cohesive devices to help
tie sentences, clauses, and utterances together.