Coherence and Cohesion in English Discourse

Ideational coherence and cohesion
Ideational coherence stems from the continuity of discourse topic and logical 
relations holding at the local and global level of discourse. As the continuity 
of referents, action frames, time, location and logical relations is potentially 
fostered by cohesion relations which facilitate the access to other occurrences 
of the same item in the mental representation of the text (de
 
Beaugrande and 
Dressler 1981: 48), ideational coherence will be discussed together with related 
cohesion relations.
1. Appeal to authority and emotions
The discourse topic of a political speech is typically associated with the 
occasion on which it is delivered; therefore it can be assumed that the participants 
in the event can anticipate it and activate the mental models necessary for adequate 
discourse processing. Thus the orator can rely on the availability of some of 
the mental representations necessary for coherent discourse interpretation in the 
minds of the audience. In his speech delivered in 1963 on the occasion of the 
March on Washington (4), Martin Luther King relies on these activated mental 
models when resorting to Lincoln and the Emancipation Proclamation signed 
by him to back up his claim that 
that the Negro [who] is still not free
should be 
granted his legal rights, which constitutes the global discourse topic of the rhetoric. 
Although Lincoln’s name is not mentioned directly, there is hardly any doubt that 
the listeners would identify the authority to whom King alludes, as apart
from 
referring to the 
great American
who signed the Emancipation Proclamation and 
in whose 
symbolic shadow
the partisants of the civil rights movement literally 
and symbolically stand, he also evokes intertextually Lincoln’s Gettysburg 
address, which opens with the sentence 
Four score and seven years ago our 
fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and 
dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.
Thus King strives 
to persuade his audience by supporting his ethical appeal with
the authority of 
Lincoln and one of the founding documents of American democracy.
(4)
Five score years ago, a great American, in whose symbolic shadow we 
stand signed the Emancipation Proclamation. This momentous decree 
came as a great beacon light of hope to millions of Negro slaves who 
had been seared in the flames of withering injustice. It came as a joyous 
daybreak to end the long night of captivity.
But one hundred years later, we must face the tragic fact that the Negro 
is still not free. One hundred years later, the life of the Negro is still sadly 
crippled by the manacles of segregation and the chains of discrimination. 
One hundred years later, the Negro lives on a lonely island of poverty in 
the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity. One hundred years later, 
the Negro is still languishing in the corners of American society and finds 

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himself an exile in his own land. So we have come here today to dramatize 
an appalling condition.
 
(King, Address at March on Washington, 1963)
In addition to resorting to authorities, King appeals to the emotions of the audience 
by referring repeatedly to America’s black citizens as the Negro, which may be 
interpreted as reflecting the negative attitude of segregationalists towards them, 
and by using a sequence of emotive, often contrastive metaphors depicting the 
situation of black people. As typical of political discourse, the container metaphor 
(