Cohesion and Coherence

Ahmed Abdallah, Language Instructor , King Saud University 

Cohesion and coherence are two different things. A text is cohesive if its elements are linked together. A text is coherent if it makes sense. However, a text may be cohesive (i.e. linked together), but incoherent (i.e. meaningless). Cohesion refers to connectivity in a text, but coherence refers to how easy it is to understand the writing. While coherence means the connection of ideas at the idea level, cohesion means the connection of ideas at the sentence level. On the one hand, coherence refers to the “rhetorical” aspects of your writing, which include developing and supporting your argument (e.g. thesis statement development), synthesizing and integrating readings, organizing and clarifying ideas. The cohesion of writing, on the other hand, focuses on the “grammatical” aspects of writing.

Coherence is a “reasonable connection or relation between ideas, arguments, statements, etc.” It means the overall "understandability" of what you write or say. When writing an essay, coherence involves such features as: summarizing the overall argument of an essay in the introductory paragraph; presenting ideas in a logical sequence; putting separate, major points into separate paragraphs; and beginning each paragraph with a 'topic sentence', following by supporting sentences. Coherence is based more on the logic of the ideas and how they are presented rather than on the language that is used to express these ideas. It is a quality of a piece of text that makes it meaningful in the minds of the readers. When the text begins to make sense on the whole, it is said to be coherent. If the readers can follow and understand a text easily, it obviously has coherence. Rather than the text appearing linked together perfectly, it is the overall impression of the text that appears to be smooth and clear. Coherence refers to the semantic unity created between the ideas, sentences, paragraphs and sections of a piece of writing.

Cohesion represents the grammatical and lexical relationship between different elements of a text which hold it together. It is the grammatical and lexical linking within a text or sentence that holds a text together and gives it meaning. In short, the links that stick different sentences and make the text meaningful can be thought of as cohesion in the text. Establishing connections between sentences, sections, and even paragraphs using synonyms, adverbials, conjunctions etc. is what brings cohesion in a text. To achieve good cohesion, you need to know how to use "cohesive devices", which are certain words or phrases that serve the purpose of connecting two statements. According to the writers Halliday and Hasan (1976), there are six main ways that cohesion is created in a text. These they called: Reference, Substitution, Ellipsis, Lexical Chains, Cohesive Nouns and Conjunction.

Cohesive devices for similarity: and, also, similarly, likewise, etc.

Cohesive devices for items in a series: first, secondly, next, then, finally etc.

 

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