The Realization Of Coherence In The Treaty Establishing The European Community

This thesis is based on the theories of textual coherence proposed by 1-lalliday and Hasan, van Dijk, and others. The theoretical framework is established on the combination of these different theories. The object of analysis is the Treaty Establishing the European Community, which was the constitutive treaty of the European Community. The Treaty on European Union (TEU), signed in the Dutch city of Maastricht in 1992, gave a new dimension to the European Community, and renamed it European Union (EU). In the TEU, the Treaty Establishing the European Community still constitutes the main part. Through a systematic analysis, the author of this thesis hopes to shed some light on the understanding of the treaty and some similar ones, and hopes the findings of the research will help people in their understanding of such treaties and thus avoid possible disputes of law in handling international relations and economic transactions. Coherence is the basis of communication; people always assume the coherence of a discourse when they are communicating with others. But coherence is realized at different levels: the global level and the local level. There are two kinds of coherence realization means at the two levels respectively: generic structure and topic structure at the global level and thematic structure and cohesion at the local level. The generic structure of the treaty is the combination of the schematic structure of a treaty and that of an organization. The schema of an organization forms the body of the schematic structure of a common treaty. The topic structure ensures the content of the treaty. There are different kinds of topic structure in discourses, but in this treaty the topic structure is like a tree. On the top of it is the main topic, which is divided into smaller ones. At the local level, in the treaty, the most obvious characteristic of the thematic progression is the frequent use of repetition of some themes throughout the treaty. The treaty is low in cohesion, with repetition only as a major means of cohesive device. And the cohesive ties constructed in only such means can extend long enough to overcome the limitation of articles. Most cohesive ties in the treaty are veiy short. Therefore, when people are reading such discourse, they should first need some knowledge of the schematic structure of it, and that of the actual matter dealt with in such a discourse. In actual reading we also need to group the topic and subtopics. The local coherence often functions as a means that will facilitate our understanding the specific sentences in the discourse. However, as a whole, the global coherence of the treaty plays the major role.