Form And Content: Coherence In Argumentative And Expository Texts From A Macro Perspective

Since the publication of Cohesion in English by M.A.K Halliday and his wife R. Hasan in 1976, coherence and cohesion have gradually been two hot terms in text analysis and a great number of domestic and foreign scholars have explored textual coherence from various perspectives and made great achievements. However, the previous studies of textual coherence also possess the following shortcomings:1. Giving more priority to coherence from a micro perspective while less from a macro perspective. That is to say, more attention of previous investigation has been paid to coherence between clauses or sentences whereas with little concern for coherence between paragraphs from a macro perspective.2. Attaching more importance to the formal coherence while less to the content coherence. Namely, the previous studies of textual coherence stress the explicit cohesion of linguistic forms to the neglect of the implicit correlation of textual content.Therefore, on the basis of admitting the fact that textual coherence can be interpreted from multidimensional perspectives, this thesis explores coherence in argumentative and expository texts from a macro perspective. It is generally accepted that a successful text is a perfect combination of form and content, so is an argumentative or expository text. Hence, coherence in argumentative and expository texts can also be analyzed from the two aspects:1. Connective as a formal device. After a survey of domestic and foreign studies, this dissertation adopts the classificatory framework of connectives by Halliday in 1994 and makes an empirical research on the major logic semantic relations of connectives in argumentative and expository texts. According to Halliday's (2000:225) metaphorical description on "elaboration", "extension" and "enhancement", such a hypothesis can be made that "extension" should be the dominant logic semantic relation in a good coherent text if Halliday's statement is true. On the ground that the result of the experiment shows the hypothesis is correct, this paper further explores the major contribution of connectives to coherence in argumentative and expository texts from a macro perspective, which includes the explicitness function, the presupposition function and the structure function.2. Topic as a content device. Based on the investigation of the definition and characteristics of topic, this paper does not focus on the clausal or sentential topic like previous scholars but studies topic in terms of macro stratificational levels of text, section and paragraph. Meanwhile, it analyzes the function of topic to explicit coherence, implicit coherence as well as non-coherence and introduces the conclusive point that topic relevance is the primary criterion for coherence in argumentative and expository texts.Form always serves content and the latter is always realized in the former. This paper then inquires into the mutual effects of formal and content devices and analyzes the signal function of connectives to topic and the constraining function of topic to connectives, which are dialectically unified in the macro coherence of argumentative and expository texts.According to dialectical materialism, theory comes from practice and is tested in practice. Finally this thesis makes a sample analysis on coherence in an expository text from a macro perspective by means of the two representative keys—connective as a formal device and topic as a content device.