A Genre-based Study Of Cohesion In College Experiencing English

In recent decades, discourse analysis has enjoyed great growth with a shift of emphasis on the three metafunctions of language: ideational, interpersonal and textual function from the perspective of Systemic Functional Grammar (shortened as SFG). The thought of textual function contributes to organizing message and creating texture which is realized by lexico-grammatical cohesion. Since the establishment of cohesion theory marked by the publication of Halliday&Hasan's book Cohesion in English in 1976, cohesion has been employed to analyze a wide range of discourses of covering literary and non-literary genres and to benefit English as a Foreign Language (shortened as EFL) teaching.This thesis is a practical application of Halliday&Hasan's cohesion theory, i.e. five cohesive patterns: reference, substitution, ellipsis, conjunction and lexical cohesion, to the analysis of cohesion features in twenty texts selected from College Experiencing English Integrated Coursebook on the basis of four genres: narration, description, exposition and argumentation. This genre-based study of cohesion in College Experiencing English is devoted to exploring the probable relationship between the specific cohesive devices and particular genres of passages. It aims to demonstrate that texts of different genres have their preferred or foregrounded cohesive devices, and moreover, it will confirm that foregrounded cohesive devices have some enabling functions in realizing the textual meaning.By statistical analysis, the author concludes that (1) every group of five texts with the same genre share similar frequency of occurrence of five cohesive devices; (2) texts with different genres may vary in frequency of occurrence of cohesive devices: Reference and lexical cohesion are most frequently used in four genres of narration, description, exposition and argumentation. In particular, personal reference and lexical reiteration are the most preferred. Conjunction is also used in each genre, but more frequently in exposition and argumentation; substitution and ellipsis are seldom used in four genres; (3) reference is the foregrounded cohesive device in narration; reference and lexical cohesion are the foregrounded cohesive devices in description and exposition; lexical cohesion is the foregrounded cohesive devices in argumentation; (4) the foregrounded cohesive devices can realize the metafunction of discourse, construct discourse topic and realize the communicative purposes of discourse.It is hoped that the study will provide referential information and supplementary explanation for a better understanding of cohesion theory in discourse analysis. Most significantly, the author hopes the findings will provide a pedagogical value for EFL teaching, especially in reading.