coherence课件.doc

Coherence1. The Definition of CoherenceIn the past two decades, foreign language schools have seen a greater importance on textual coherence. Although different linguists believe that coherence is the essential property of a text，they approach the concept from different angles VanDijk interprets coherence from the perspective of semanticsHe believes “coherence is a semantic property of discourse，based on the interpretation of each individual sentence relative to the interpretation of other sentences”（1973：） Hallidays full attention is given to those cohesive devices such as reference，substitution，ellipsis，conjunction and lexical cohesion. Widdowson（1978）believes coherence is a pragmatic conceptCoherence is the relationship between illocutionary acts Beaugrande（1981），coherence is defined as the procedures which ensure conceptual connectivity，including（1）logical relations，（2）organization of events，objects and situations，（3）continuity in human experienceIt concerns “the way in which the components of the textual world which underlie the surface text are mutually accessible and relevant”（1981：4） In Brown and Yules opinion（1983），coherence is the result of the interaction of the text and the receiverIt is provided by readers processing of the textWe can see that they focus on different aspects of discoursal coherence. Coherence is a multi-level notion. (1) At the semantic level. Coherence is established through cohesive devices and propositional development(2) At the pragmatic level. Coherence is often achieved through the illocutions or implicatures of discourse in linguistic communication on certain occasions(3) At the mutual mental interactive level. Coherence is considered as a process of mental interaction between the producer and the receiver. It is about interlocutors interaction.To sum up, coherence is the study of the connectedness in multi-level notion, varying from semantic level, to pragmatic level and to mental level. 2. Coherence in Discourse 2.1 Coherence and Discourse Coherence is a key concept of discourse analysis and a research subject of general interest as well. So far, there has been no systematic and generally accepted criterion by which discoursal coherence is explained due to the complexity of the concept itself.2.2 Cohesion and Coherence Before we come to the study of coherence, we must notify another relatively existing concept, i.e., cohesion. 2.2.1 Cohesion vs. Coherence The sentences in a text (also larger units than a sentence, such as paragraphs) can be related to each other in various ways. Firstly, you can use words and phrases in one sentence which relate to other words or phrases in a preceding sentence. This type of relation is a more visible relation and it is called Cohesion. But there is a deeper, more underlying kind of connectedness, where the items form logical connections with one another. This form of connectedness is called Coherence as we have stated above. 2.2.2 The relationship between Coherence and Cohesion. Cohesion is not the necessary condition, nor is it a sufficient condition of discoursal coherence (Enkvist). (1) Formly cohesive discourse may not be a coherent one. (A)(A) In the morning, I brush my teeth, turn on the radio, open my eyes and get up.This sentence is cohesive, but it doesnt coherent in chorological order.(a) In the morning, I open my eyes, get up, turn on the radio and brush my teeth.(2) Formly incohesive discourse may be coherent through common sense, cultural background, contextual information, imagination, logical assumption, ect. instead of cohesion in form(B).(A) Husband: Thats the telephone.Wife: Im in the bath.Husband: OK.Formally, this conversation is not cohesive at all. Telephone, bath, and OK seem irrelevant to each other. But they are coherent by considering the context of situation: The husband is lying on the sofa reading a piece of newspaper. Then the phone rings. At this time the wife is bathing. So taking this non-linguistic context into account we can interpret the conversation in this way.(a) Husband: Can you answer it, please?Wife: No, I cant answer it because Im in the bath.Husband: Ill answer it.Thus this interpretation seems rather coherent now Cohesion and coherence co-work to make a whole discourse. 3. Levels of Coherence. Views on how to classify coherence levels also varies. (1) According to Halliday, coherence can divided into three levels: the semantic level, the pragmatic level and the mutual mental interactive level.(2) According to Jane Austin, there are three levels of coherence in discourse: explicitimplicitinvisible, which could be expressed as: context - social/cultural/situational context-mutual mental interaction; To make a conclusion, coherence can be generally classified into two large scales: overt coherence and covert coherence.3.1 Overt coherence refers to the visible cohesive devices at the semantic level, including grammatical devices and lexical device. Eg. Grammatical devices. Eg. reference, ellipsis, conjunction, substitution , ect.Lexical devices. such as repetition, synonyms, antonyms, ect.3.2 Covert coherence can be further divided in to two categories. Context-based coherence. Users in community of very language have their own culture, history, customs, idioms, values, ect, through the thinking patterns, cognitive habits and speech act, which would penetrate into their individual behavior and reflect in discourse. In such cases, we must understand such discourse based on both situational context and cultural background.(C) A: Whats the temperature? B: A hundred and two. Pragmatic-base coherence. It has some thing