Coherence (linguistics)
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Coherence in linguistics is what makes a text semantically meaningful. It is especially dealt with in
deictic, anaphoric and cataphoric elements or a logical tense structure, and semantic features such as presuppositions and implications
connected to general world knowledge.
The purely linguistic elements that make a text coherent are encompassed under the term cohesion. However, text-based features which provide cohesion in a text do not necessarily help achieve coherence; that is, they do not always contribute to the meaningfulness of a text. It has been stated that a text coheres only if the world around is also coherent[citation needed].
Robert De Beaugrande and Wolfgang U. Dressler define coherence as a "continuity of senses" and "the mutual access and relevance within a configuration of concepts and relations".[1]
Thereby a textual world is created that does not have to comply to the real world. But within this textual world the arguments also have to be connected logically so that the reader/hearer can produce coherence.
"Continuity of senses" implies a link between cohesion and the theory of Schemata initially proposed by
TESOL[4]
) are the ways in which the world is organized in our minds. In other words, they are mental frameworks for the organization of information about the world. It can thus be assumed that a text is not always one because the existence of coherence is not always a given. On the contrary, coherence is relevant because of its dependence upon each individual's content and formal schemata.
See also
- M.A.K. Halliday
- Semantic prosody
- Systemic functional linguistics
- Coh-Metrix
Sources
- ^ De Beaugrande, Robert and Dressler, Wolfgang: Introduction to Text Linguistics. New York, 1996. p. 84–112.
- ^ Bartlett, F.C. (1932). Remembering: A study in experimental and social psychology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
- ^ Wagoner, Brady. "Culture and mind in reconstruction: Bartlett's analogy between individual and group processes". Aalborg University, Denmark.
- ^ Carrell, P.L. and Eisterhold, J.C. (1983) "Schema Theory and ESL Reading Pedagogy", in Carrell, P.L., Devine, J. and Eskey, D.E. (eds) (1988) Interactive Approaches to Second Language Reading. Cambridge: CUP.
- Bußmann, Hadumod: Lexikon der Sprachwissenschaft. Stuttgart, 1983. S. 537.
Further reading
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