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Cohesion and Coherence Studies: Development, Chaos and Application

Received: 5 July 2020     Accepted: 14 July 2020     Published: 23 July 2020
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Abstract

Cohesion and coherence are the basic concepts and important subjects in discourse analysis. After the publication of Cohesion in English by Halliday and Hasan (1976), linguists paid close attention to cohesion, coherence and the relationship between the two concepts. They adapted and developed this theory from diversified perspectives. Since cohesion and coherence are also two critical elements of high-quality articles, a multiplicity of linguists and educators were committed to exploring the effect of cohesion and coherence on writing quality. In addition, some researchers tried to apply cohesion and coherence theory to English teaching so as to improve students’ writing quality. The past decades have witnessed the theoretical and empirical development of cohesion and coherence. This paper first makes a review of the theoretical development of cohesion and coherence, and the relationship between the two concepts. And the present paper also deals with chaos in previous cohesion and coherence studies combining the author’s beliefs. Then empirical studies of cohesion and coherence theory are introduced which are divided into two categories. The first group of empirical studies explores the relationship of cohesion, coherence and writing quality; The second group applies this theory to writing teaching. The article concludes with limitations and future directions of researches about the application of cohesion and coherence theory to writing teaching.

Published in Social Sciences (Volume 9, Issue 4)
DOI 10.11648/j.ss.20200904.15
Page(s) 113-120
Creative Commons

This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, provided the original work is properly cited.

Copyright

Copyright © The Author(s), 2020. Published by Science Publishing Group

Keywords

Cohesion, Coherence, Writing Quality, Writing Teaching

References
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    Ying Sun. (2020). Cohesion and Coherence Studies: Development, Chaos and Application. Social Sciences, 9(4), 113-120. https://doi.org/10.11648/j.ss.20200904.15

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  • @article{10.11648/j.ss.20200904.15,
      author = {Ying Sun},
      title = {Cohesion and Coherence Studies: Development, Chaos and Application},
      journal = {Social Sciences},
      volume = {9},
      number = {4},
      pages = {113-120},
      doi = {10.11648/j.ss.20200904.15},
      url = {https://doi.org/10.11648/j.ss.20200904.15},
      eprint = {https://article.sciencepublishinggroup.com/pdf/10.11648.j.ss.20200904.15},
      abstract = {Cohesion and coherence are the basic concepts and important subjects in discourse analysis. After the publication of Cohesion in English by Halliday and Hasan (1976), linguists paid close attention to cohesion, coherence and the relationship between the two concepts. They adapted and developed this theory from diversified perspectives. Since cohesion and coherence are also two critical elements of high-quality articles, a multiplicity of linguists and educators were committed to exploring the effect of cohesion and coherence on writing quality. In addition, some researchers tried to apply cohesion and coherence theory to English teaching so as to improve students’ writing quality. The past decades have witnessed the theoretical and empirical development of cohesion and coherence. This paper first makes a review of the theoretical development of cohesion and coherence, and the relationship between the two concepts. And the present paper also deals with chaos in previous cohesion and coherence studies combining the author’s beliefs. Then empirical studies of cohesion and coherence theory are introduced which are divided into two categories. The first group of empirical studies explores the relationship of cohesion, coherence and writing quality; The second group applies this theory to writing teaching. The article concludes with limitations and future directions of researches about the application of cohesion and coherence theory to writing teaching.},
     year = {2020}
    }
    

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    AB  - Cohesion and coherence are the basic concepts and important subjects in discourse analysis. After the publication of Cohesion in English by Halliday and Hasan (1976), linguists paid close attention to cohesion, coherence and the relationship between the two concepts. They adapted and developed this theory from diversified perspectives. Since cohesion and coherence are also two critical elements of high-quality articles, a multiplicity of linguists and educators were committed to exploring the effect of cohesion and coherence on writing quality. In addition, some researchers tried to apply cohesion and coherence theory to English teaching so as to improve students’ writing quality. The past decades have witnessed the theoretical and empirical development of cohesion and coherence. This paper first makes a review of the theoretical development of cohesion and coherence, and the relationship between the two concepts. And the present paper also deals with chaos in previous cohesion and coherence studies combining the author’s beliefs. Then empirical studies of cohesion and coherence theory are introduced which are divided into two categories. The first group of empirical studies explores the relationship of cohesion, coherence and writing quality; The second group applies this theory to writing teaching. The article concludes with limitations and future directions of researches about the application of cohesion and coherence theory to writing teaching.
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Author Information
  • Faculty of Teacher Education, Nanjing Normal University, Nanjing, China

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