A Cognitive Perspective To Atypical Discourse Coherence

This article sets out to examine how coherence is achieved by participants in the dynamic process of communication from a cognitive perspective. Its purpose is to provide a new approach which is more effective than other theories in interpreting discourse coherence.Since the publication of Halliday and Hasan's Cohesion in English in 1976, there has been increasing interest in the study of discourse analysis. The concept of coherence, however, is not fully understood. This is because researchers view coherence from different theoretical and research perspectives. Some early studies on coherence take the text-based approach, regarding coherence as a text-immanent entity and basing research on semantic properties of discourse or linguistic factors. Actually, coherence is not just determined by linguistic factors, but constructed by the participants in the dynamic process of communication.This thesis first offers some rationale for its perspective, insisting on a cognitive approach to the study of coherence. Then the thesis makes a survey of past studies, recapitulating respectively four previous theories: cohesion theory, texture theory, speech act theory and coherence relation theory, and pointing out some limitations of those theories in their interpreting coherence. The third part of this thesis is devoted to a discussion on general characteristics of the prototype of discourse coherence and the pragmatic functions of atypical coherence. Based on prototype theory, the thesis brings forward some conditions which typical coherence usually meets. However some discourse may not fulfill those conditions but still keep coherent in genuine communication, that is, some discourses may have atypical coherence of their own for some specific communicative purposes. Therefore the thesis also takes a brief look at the functions of atypical coherence. On the basis of foregoing discussions, the thesis moves on to an elaboration of a cognitive perspective to atypical coherence. This part introduces a theoretical framework of relevance theory and schema theory. Based on these two theories, the thesis holds that a better understanding of discourse coherence is based on the contextual effects gained in the cognitive environment of the addressee. Coherence is actually derived from seeking optimal relevance of utterances. Theorganized background knowledge also leads us to predict aspects in our interpretation of discourse coherence. The coherence is the result of interaction between knowledge presented in the discourse and the addressee's own knowledge and experience of the world. We develop a coherent interpretation of a discourse through the interactive process of combining textual information with the information we bring to the discourse. Finally the thesis draws its conclusion that not all discourses meet typical conditions for coherence; discourse coherence is actually a matter of more or less; it is not only a linguistic feature of discourse but also the judgement made by the addressee on the discourse and therefore should be interpreted from a cognitive perspective.The present study shows that cognitive approach is more effective than previous approaches in interpreting coherence. This thesis not only offers some insights into the nature of coherence, but also suggests some ways for coherence interpretation. Coherence analysis is an open field for research. The present study is just a preliminary step in the inquiry of coherence from a cognitive perspective, though it is of some theoretical and practical significance. The study still remains to be extended and specified. The application of the findings of the study is a much wider domain for further research.