Textual Cohesion And Functional Tenor

Many linguists, including Halliday, hold the view that register plays an important role in the formation of cohesion (Zhang Delu, 1999). The author thinks that this conclusion is too general, for register is the variety of language used in a given situational context, which is examined on three parameters: the field of discourse, the mode of discourse, and the tenor of discourse. So if register is a controlling factor of cohesion, the functional tenor should be the crux, because it is for functional tenor that a text is composed and the message is conveyed.This thesis focuses on the study of the relation between cohesion and functional tenor in the light of theories of the functional grammar. The author believes that functional tenor in the register plays a great role in cohesion and many choices of cohesive devices in a text are decided by the functional tenor of the textIn order to illustrate the author's belief, this thesis is organized into four chapters. Chapter One is a survey on the theories of cohesion and functional tenor, especially the competing theories about the determining factors in the formation of cohesion. Chapter Two and Chapter Three are the discussions of the relations between nonstructural cohesion, structural cohesion and functional tenor respectively. Chapter Four is the conclusion of this thesis.In the discussion of the relation between nonstructural cohesion, structural cohesion and functional tenor, the author collects some texts of two different functional tenors in the field of bank at random and makes some careful analysis. Half of the texts are expository entries in the English encyclopedias, and the rest are persuasive advertisements in English magazines. It is found in the analysis that the occurrence and frequency of cohesive devices vary regularly with the functional tenor of the text, and cohesive devices contribute to the achievement of functional tenor. However, there are some exceptions. For example, thefunctional tenor of texts makes no difference in the frequency of substitution and ellipsis.Based on the study of textual cohesion and two different functional tenors, the author suggests in what way and to what degree textual cohesion and functional tenor are related to each other.In addition, the author points out that this thesis is only a preliminary study on the relation between cohesion and functional tenor. It is expected that this finding can be of some help in the future study in this field.