A word on discourse grammar and cohesion

For this last lesson, let’s focus on a very important aspect of English grammar: discourse grammar and more especially, the concept of cohesion that has already been hinted at earlier. Discourse, in traditional grammar, refers to an utterance (« énoncé », in French) longer than a sentence. It has to do with meaning and most of all, with the organization of meaningful elements at the broader level of complex sentences and texts. In other words: how do I organize and prioritize information in a longer piece of communication -- an essay, a newspaper article, a speech, etc. -- so that my readers/listeners may get the message right, and not lose interest in what I am communicating? As you might know, the word "text" itself comes from a Latin word that means "to weave" (texere), i.e. to weave threads into a unified/solid fabric. When it comes to the making of a text, not only words but sentences are woven into a whole. To do so, certain devices are used in English that may be split into two categories: thematic and information structure (i.e. the order and structuring of elements within a clause or sentence to keep the thread of meaning running) and cohesion, a notion we will focus on now. These two sets of devices are known as "discourse grammar".

Cohesion means "holding together" and here we’re dealing with sentences, mostly. To achieve cohesion in a text in English, lexical means are generally used, i.e. words that connect (parts of) sentences to the previous, or the next one(s). Such words can be either anaphoric (i.e. pointing backward to some element that came before) or cataphoric (pointing forward to some element yet to come).

For example, proforms are often anaphoric (s/he, it, they, etc.) insofar as they remind the reader/listener of some previous noun used either earlier in the sentence, or in the previous sentence.

A number of set phrases or adverbs can be used with a cataphoric effect "however" (i.e. "I am adding a new argument, and the sentence that follows contradicts the previous one"), "in this respect" ("the sentence that follows is an explanation/consequence of what I’ve just said/written"), "consequently" (often used at the beginning of a new sentence) are but a few examples of these.

Sometimes, students learning English as a foreign language tend to imitate the way in which those "link words" are used in their native language, and French learners of English are no exception to that rule. Yet, there are subtle differences between the two languages. Although both idioms possess relatively the same cohesive tools (French has "ce" and English has "it", French has "voici" and English has "here is", etc.), they do not use them in exactly the same way.

The following exercises will help you understand these subtle differences.