Coherence

THE PURELY LINGUISTIC ELEMENTS THAT MAKE A TEXT COHERENT ARE SUBSUMED UNDER THE TERM COHESION.IT IS THE LOGICAL CONECTIONS THAT READERS OR LISTENERS PERCEIVE IN A WRITTEN OR ORAL TEXT.

COHESION
It comes from the Latin for sticking together. A term in functional grammar that relates to the grammar of texts. Cohesion is what makes the words and sentences of a text stick toghether as a whole. Whithout cohesion, a text is disjointed and dull.

Examples
without Cohesion
Melisa Jaffer is one of the

With Cohesion
Melisa Jaffer is one of the

most accomplished actresses in Australia. Melisa Jaffer had a desire to live of comtemplative prayer. Melisa Jaffer went into a closed order of nuns. The Servants of the Blessed Sacrament is an enclosed order of nuns. Melisa Jaffer went back into acting.

most accomplished actresses in Australia, whose desire to live a life of contemplative prayer took her into an enclosed order of nuns, the Servants of the Blessed Sacrament, and then brought her back to acting.

There are four ways of giving a text cohesion.

REFERENTIAL: I spoke with Joe and he invited me to visit him. 2. CONJUNCTIVE: He was at home when I arrived. 3. ELLIPTICAL: Kitty was there, and so was Margaret. 4. LEXICAL: We all ate a good meal.
1.

Referential Cohesion
Means using pronouns or determiners to refer to the known nouns in a text.

As we can see in the example, instead of repetatedly using her name ( Melissa Jaffer) we can use a pronoun such as her.

Conjunctive Cohesion
Means using conjuctions (underlined) to bind the parts of a text together.

This book should be read almost as though it were science fiction. But it is not science fiction: it is science. Clich or not, stranger than fiction expresses exactly how I feel about the truth.One of my hopes is that I may have some success in astonishing others.

Elliptical Cohesion
Means using ellipsis ( the omission of a word or words) and relying on the readers minds to fill in the missing bits from what

they have read (or heard) before. The words omited are crossed out. Tina looked back (she) saw her parents. They were very happy, and she was (happy) as well. They were strolling along, and she was ( strolling along) too. Do you think they got there on time? Yes, I do ( think they got there on time).

Lexical Cohesion
Means using the lexicon (the words) of a text to give

the text unity. There are four varieties.

a) REPETITION: repeating the same word or words.

Play, play, play: thats all you seem to do. b) SYNONYMY: using words with a similar meaning. I saw this large dog. You know, really huge. c) ANTONYNY: using words of opposite meaning. Get educated! You cant always stay ignorant. d) COLLOCATION: using words that go with each other. My friend did me a great favour last week.

What is cohesion and coherence?

Cohesion and coherence arent too difficult to explain. Cohesion refers to connectivity in a text. Coherence refers to how easy it is to understand the writing.

Cohesion with NO Coherence

My favourite colours is blue. Blue sports cars go very fast. Driving in this way is

dangerous and can cause many car crashes. I had a car accident once and broke my leg. I was very sad because I had to miss a holiday in Europe because of the injury. There is plenty of cohesion here. The sentences connect clearly together but if you read the paragraph, it really makes no sense

Cohesion and Coherence

My favourite colour is blue. I like it because it is calming and it relaxes me. I

often go outside in the summer and lie on the grass and look into the clear sky when I am stressed. For this reason, Id have to say my favourite colour is blue. This sentence is both coherent and cohesive

 When the big parts fit, we call that good feeling coherence; When sentences connect, we call it cohesion.
Roy Peter Clark