A Systemic-functional Analysis To Text Coherence

After the publication of Cohesion in English, the term coherence becomes the focus of attention among linguists. Many theories are formed to study it from different perspectives.If a passage hangs together as a text, it will display a consistency of register. Register ensures that there is a topic, an organic structure in the text. According to the particular register of the text, the forms taken by the cohesive relation will differ. Most linguists including Halliday agree that people insist on interpreting any passage as text if there is the remotest possibility of doing so.Halliday stressed that a text is co-defined by the concepts of register and cohesion. The semiotic components of the situation (field, tenor and mode) are systematically related to the functional components of the semantics (ideational, interpersonal and textual): field to the ideational component, and mode to the textual component. The ideational component is realized by transitivity system. The interpersonal component is realized by mood and modality, etc. Theme structure in the sentences belongs to the structural part of the textual component while cohesion belongs to the non-structural part of the textual component. Thus analysis on the transitivity system, Themes and cohesive devices in a text can explain the coherence of a text.In this thesis, three texts of different genres are analyzed from transitivity system, Theme structure and cohesion devices to explain text coherence. Considering the length of the thesis, the interpersonal component will not be explored in this thesis.