Lexical Cohesion In English Public Political Speaking

Cohesion, as one of the most important components of a discourse, contributes much to the coherence of a discourse and has aroused the interests of many linguists and scholars ever since Halliday and Hasan published their famous work Cohesion in English in 1976. Cohesion relations can be divided into two categories– grammatical cohesion and lexical cohesion. The effect of lexical cohesion can be achieved by different lexical choices in discourses. Lexical cohesion is considered as the most important one in various means. Many scholars have done significant researches on it. However, few of the studies focus on how lexical cohesion is used in English public political speaking. Thus, this paper is aimed at investigating how lexical cohesion is applied in this register.With the fast development of the society, speaking well in a public setting has become an important part of living. Skill in public speaking has long been recognized as part of the equipment of every educated man and woman. As a subcomponent of English public speaking, English public political speaking is an important social-cultural phenomenon in the west. It is one that the speaker, usually on behalf of a certain class, society, or party, makes to audience on some important matters and relationships home and abroad. This type of public speaking has a wide range of application. Study on English public political speaking will help speakers learn to make successful speeches in public. And lexical cohesion analysis on English public political speaking will assist students to prepare good public speaking with the aid of lexical cohesive devices.The whole paper is made up of five chapters: an introduction of the whole thesis, a literature review of the theoretical framework, an introduction of English public political speaking, a study of lexical cohesion in English public political speaking and a conclusion of the thesis. Based on three most influential taxonomies classified by Halliday & Hasan (1976), Hasan (1984) and Hoey (1991) respectively, a refined taxonomy of lexical cohesion is put forward, and 40 famous English public political speeches are analyzed. The distribution of different lexical cohesive devices in English public political speaking is investigated by examining the frequency of each device in all the samples. A comparison of results with previous analyses is made to see how lexical cohesion is applied differently in different registers, ultimately, leading to an awareness of how we should appropriately use lexical cohesion to make successful public speeches.