2.9 The concept of textual cohesion
2.9.1 Lexical cohesion
Halliday and Hasan (1976: 274) describe lexical cohesion as the cohesive effect in the structure of texts, brought about by the selection of the vocabulary. With the concept of lexical cohesion, systemic functional linguists are more interested in exploring discourses to provide explanations about the relationships, especially in meaning,
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between lexical items, particularly content words found in a text (Paltridge, 2006). The main aspects of these relationships which systemic functional linguist are interested in are highlighted to include: repetitions/reiterations and collocations.
2.9.1.1 Repetitions/ Reiterations
The concept of repetition, which is also referred to as reiteration, is reference to the primary paradigmatic relation of lexical items. In the repetitive relations, the same lexical item recurs over a number of times, especially in adjacent sentences and is either reiterated in the same lexical form and function or in another lexical shape but still explicate the same semantic features of the replaced items. Consequently, repetition of lexical items could occur either within an immediate environment of the preceding structure or after a long stretch in the structure of texts. Furthermore, these relations are not restricted to a single morphological form of the word but could assume, depending on the semantic demands, varying forms. Apparently, reiteration could either be a recurrence of a synonym, antonym, hyponym or metonym.
Reiteration of synonymous lexical items refers to the repeated recurrence of lexical items that share exact or nearly the same meaning with referent item. Synonyms with exact referent, according to Stanojevic (2009: 193-200), shares a ‘seme’ or
‘denotational sememe’, while those with inexactly similar meanings share a broader
‘denotational’ or ‘connotational sememe’, and thus overlap within the semantic field.
Within the boundaries of synonymous relations, there are some words considered as being in homonymic semantic relations with each other; a situation, in which one word in the group of words re-enters the text with the same spelling and pronunciation like the other, but expresses different meanings as it is reiterated. Apparently, homonyms are considered to be simultaneously homographs and homophones. Homonyms are regarded as homographs when the repeated word(s) share(s) the same spelling but differ in meaning and grammatical functions as in a pair like: ‘bear’ (verb) and ‘bear’ (noun).
When used as a verb ‘bear’ which means ‘to support’ or ‘carry’; and while when functioning as a noun refers to ‘the animal’. Semantic relations in homophones, on the other hand, refer to linguistic instances in which a word is pronounced in the same manner as another word but differs in meaning and sometimes even in spelling. The re-entry of such words may sometimes trigger different semantic relations.
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Repetition on the premise of metonymy refers to a situation in which the reiterated lexical item re-enters the text and is addressed not by its own form, but by a different lexical unit, though still demonstrating sameness in meaning with that which it is being referred to. Therefore, in metonymic connectedness, the repetition of lexical words demonstrates part/whole relationships in meaning of the lexical items; the referent in this situation is part of, or a member of the same semantic category with the unit it reiterates. A metonym, therefore, means part of a whole; apparently, the referent denoting a subset of what another word denotes or a thing being referred to as part of something else.
Hyponymic reiteration refers to the use of a word or phrase whose semantic field extends into the semantic boundaries of another word. This relationship is said to be of two kinds: hyperonym or hypernym. This implies that the reiterated word/words or phrase(s) are in hyponymic relationship, which offers a more specific reference than in hypernymic reiterated situations. However, the nature of repetition that occurs in hypernymy, which is also known as super-ordinate, is much broader than that expressed in hyponyms. In polysemic semantic relations, however, the reiterated word or phrase has multiple meanings and it is usually related by contiguity of meaning within the semantic field.
Reiteration of antonyms is the repetition of words whose semantic features lie in an inherently incompatible binary relationship. Apparently, the presence of semantic features in the reiterated lexical item in the pair is in opposite relations with the other word though they cohere. This oppositeness, given the various semantic variables, is considered in more restricted meanings. Apparently, reiterated antonyms are said to project relations in more restricted gradable, complementary and relational terms.
Repetition of gradable antonyms refers to reiteration of word pairs whose meanings are opposite yet they lie on a continuous spectrum. For example, like in the use of this pair of words: hot/cold. Reiteration of complementary antonyms, on the other hand, refers to repetition of words whose meanings are opposite; but unlike in the case with the gradable antonyms, their semantic relations do not lie on a continuous spectrum as in this pair of words: push/pull. And repetition of relational antonyms refers to recurrence of word pairs where their differing nature makes sense only in the context of the relationship between the two meanings derived from the context of use like in the following pair of words:
teacher/pupil.
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These semantic relations are at the disposal of writers as they create various chains of meanings in their attempts to recreate social realities. For instance, a writer might reiterate homophones to create puns and to deceive the reader or to suggest multiple meanings.
2.9.1.2 Collocation/Colligation
The origin of the application of collocation as a lexical device to understand the operations of language in discourses is traced to the works of Firth John Rupert who suggested in his work titled: Papers in Linguistics. A Course Book (1957) that the meaning of a word is best understood by the company it keeps. From this beginning sprang up a series of analysis on collocation. Halliday and Hasan (1976: 285-6) define collocation as a linguistic situation in which any two lexical items co-occur in similar contexts, especially in adjacent sentences and generate cohesion.
At the moment, some critical discourse analysts like Morley (1985), Hoey (2005), and Siepman (2005) have developed a new opinion about collocation which Gledhil (2009) summarises as an essentially de-contextualised concept which does not only account for the role of collocation in on-going discourse but the entire process of its creation. However, in spite of these divergent views about collocation, explanations surrounding this model which were first provided by Firth (1957) and later improved upon by Halliday and Hasan (1976) are still relevant in its analysis of the notion as habitually linked group of words in discourses.
The notion of collocation is used to describe associations between vocabulary items which have a tendency to co-occur. Apparently, collocation defines these tendencies in the combination of adjectives and nouns, and the intra-sentential relationship between verbs and nouns, and other lexical items which typically cohere.
Halliday and Hasan (1976) refer to collocation as a situation whereby lexical items in some way share meaning relationship with another word in the preceding text, because it is in direct repetition of it, or is in some sense synonymous with it, or tend to occur in the same lexical environment, which ‘coheres with that word and so contributes to the texture’ (Halliday and Hasan, 1976: 319). The principle behind this relationship is the cohesive effect achieved by the continuity of lexical meaning. Cohesion, to Halliday and Hasan (1976), is, therefore, the function of the relation between the lexical items themselves, which has both a semantic aspect- synonymy, hyponymy, metonymy, among others, and a purely lexical or collocational aspect, the mutual expectancy between words
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that arise from occurring frequently in the environment of the other, or of the two occurring in a range of environments common to both. The whole of the vocabulary of a language is internally structured and organised along many dimensions, which collectively signals, what Halliday and Hasan (1976: 320) call ‘what goes on with what’;
as such serves to transform a series of unrelated structures into a unified coherent whole.
Depending on the nature and manner of occurrence, collocation is divided into the following categories which include among others: adverb + adjective [N+Adj], adjective + noun [Adj + N], noun + noun [N+ N], noun + verb [N + V], verb + expression with preposition [V + PP], verb + adverb [V + Adv], and adverb + adjective [Adv + Adj].
Apart from this categorisation, it is also worthy to note that, the lexical items involved in this collocative cohesive chains could occur within an immediate adjacent environment; like within a sentence (intra-sentential level) or between sentences (inter-sentential level) which could be located at adjacent sentences at distance intervals throughout the discourse. The inter-sentential collocative relations made Firth (1957) to coin the term ‘colligation’ so as to describe the collocative cohesive chains that occur at the inter-sentential level either between adjacent sentences, paragraphs, and or larger portions in the body of the text.
Furthermore, the notion of ‘colligation’ which was championed by Firth was developed to account for collocation of lexical items at the inter-sentential level in the structure of texts. This notion extended the meaning of ‘collocation’ to include instances in which lexical items, adjacent sentences or larger structural portions, either in anaphoric or cataphoric situation, shares semantic features with each other, thus enhancing cohesion. An examination of these taxonomical relationships, as claimed in SFL, provides explanations about the various choices and uses of lexical items that constitute and unify larger portions in the texture of texts.
This study demonstrates that the boundaries of lexical and grammatical elements in discourses as established by SFL and adopted in CDA can be extended from just being simply items for textual cohesion but as linguistic attributes that code and illuminate contextual variables such as social solidarity. This is because of the fact that the textual character of these lexical items which is regarded as mere linguistic components for the construction of texts can be expanded to include signification and representation of social realities. Consequently, given the relationship existing between the text and the context, analysis of the lexical items in texture of texts, therefore, combines perspectives from the
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traditional grammatical point of view with perspectives from socio-cultural practices to offer useful insights of the linguistic constituents that connect these texts with the social context in which they occur; hence texture of text is claimed to result from the interaction of these features. As a result, analysis of the discourse from CDA perspectives considers the textual character of texts as arising from the context of situation which influences the linguistic disposition in such a text.