The Application Of Cohesion In American Presidential Debates

Cohesion is not only the approach to create coherence, but also the instrument to form an integrated structure. There are so many experts both at home and abroad who have worked on the cohesion theory from the theoretical and empirical aspect. As the second language of Chinese students, the listening, speaking, reading, and writing skills of English should be mastered. Among these four language skills, speaking and writing are much more difficult than listening and reading. Above all, the impromptu speech is the most difficult one to master. Therefore, how to deal with the textual cohesion in the impromptu speech is turning into a challenging problem which the Chinese English learners are facing.The thesis adopts the typical text, the US Presidential Debate, among the impromptu speech as the research object, the cohesion theory as the theoretical framework. It tries to discuss the functions of cohesion applied on the impromptu speech, by using the quantitative and qualitative methods, and the tool of AntConc; Furthermore, the thesis analyzes the concrete functions of the cohesive devices used in the US Presidential Debates, and tries to apply these functions into the English oral teaching. The study attempts to answer the following questions:1. What kinds of cohesive devices are used in the presidential debates?2. In the debates, what are respective functions of the cohesive devices, and how to achieve them?3. Is there any significance of the successful usage of cohesive devices in impromptu speech for second language teaching, particularly for the oral language teaching?The thesis analyzes the target text from the aspect of the cohesion theory, and leads to several findings as follows:1. The five types of cohesion are all used;2. Functions discussed are summarized as follows:①Form a cohesive text;②Tie the theme of the sentence to the topic;③Put emphasis on the speaker’s own proposal to attract the audience’s attention;④Make the speaker’s words more persuasive;⑤Make the whole issue logical and clear; ⑥Make the speech brief and avoid the redundancy.The thesis analyses the specific functions of cohesive devices used in the US Presidential Debates. With the aid of this thesis, the English learners could comprehend the content of US Presidential debates, and guide the development of the oral English teaching in the future.