A Tentative Analysis Of The Roles Of Contextual Elements In Discourse Coherence

Coherence is always one of the important subjects in discourse analysis and itsrelationship with cohesion is the main focus. In 1976, Halliday and Hasan publishedtheir book Cohesion in English, which marked the foundation of Cohesion Theory.According to Halliday and Hasan (1976), a text is a passage of discourse which iscoherent in these two regards: one is coherent with the context of situation, andtherefore consistent in register;the other is coherent with respect to itself, andtherefore cohesive. Here, we can see they have noted other components beyondcohesion, such as context, can contribute to a forming of a text. However, it isregretful that in their book they focus too much on the role of cohesion in discoursecoherence and almost ignore the role of context in perceiving coherence. They clearlypoint out that there must be some cohesion means for the words to be a discourse.Halliday and Hasan's Cohesion Theory lacks interpreting force for those lackingcohesive devices in surface structure but in fact coherent in semantics. Many scholarsin later days gradually realize that cohesion is neither the sufficient condition nor theessential condition for the realization of coherence. Therefore, many scholars attemptto study coherence from different perspectives. For example, Fries and Danes (1974),study coherence from the perspective of thematic progression. But in fact, it is still astudy of the function of cohesion in language itself. Successful communication andthe realization of coherence are highly context-dependent. Although many scholarshave noted and analyzed the roles of context in discourse coherence, they justmention the roles of context in their studies and don't expound them in particular, letalone the analysis of the roles of contextual elements in discourse coherence. So, thethesis attempts to comprehensively study coherence from the perspective of context,find out the different roles of contextual elements in discourse coherence and givesome implications to English learning and teaching.The thesis applies context as a basic theory and mainly adopts qualitativeapproach to analyze the collected data, which are mainly dialogues from Englishliterary works and to study the roles of context in coherence, as well as the differentroles of contextual elements in coherence. From the analysis of the roles of contextualelements, we can see that contextual elements play important roles in discourse,especially in spoken discourse, which is highly context-dependent. The thesis alsodraws a conclusion that situational context and cultural context exert different roles indiscourse coherence. The former is direct and transitory, while the latter is indirectand lasting because the influence of culture is always pervasive and omnipresent.The thesis enjoys significance both in theory and in practice. In theory, on thebasis of general research of scholars, the author takes its rationality and deepens theunderstanding of context theory. In practice, the thesis puts context theory into thepractice of spoken discourse coherence and also gives some implications to Englishlearning and teaching. Context plays an important part in oral exchange, so the authorhopes that the hearer not only understands the literal meaning from the linguisticaspects but also gets to the real intention of the speaker from non-linguistic aspects.Only in this way can the communication proceed successfully. Literary works aregood sources to increase learners' context awareness. But in practical Englishlearning and teaching, the roles of literary works are always ignored. Therefore,learners should select those literary works in which they are very interested anddeeply analyze how each of these situational elements plays its role. In such a way,they can improve their context sensitive. The roles of cultural context are indirect andpervasive, so learners should pay more attention to the input of culture in languagelearning.Findings in this field, applied in daily life, will significantly promote humancommunication, which, in turn, will improve people's life.