Research On Complementarity Between Cognitive Linguistics And Systemic Functional Grammar In Textual Coherence Analysis

Textual analysis has been one of the hot topics in linguistics. Textual cohesion and coherence is one of the most important aspects in it, which has drawn the linguists'attention since this century. And many linguists have got great achievements in this field.Systemic functional grammar is one of the most mature and operational analysis methods among them. Systemic functional approach studies textual production as well as the relation and interaction of textual function and its structure concerning situational and cultural context from social function of language. The cohesion plus register theory proposed by Halliday and Hasan not only discusses textual cohesion comprehensively, but also puts forward two standards of textual coherence based on it. Although the standards have been controversial in linguistics, the detailed study on cohesion could not be surpassed till now. Systemic functional approach analyzes textual coherence through social function of language. Although it is deficient in explaining some problems, such as how the language system is realized, and what the cognitive conditions are in textual coherence, etc, it proves it great importance in textual coherence analysis by many successful illustrations.While cognitive linguistics studies language from the perspective of human cognition, and emphasizes the effects of human experience in language use. It studies how different language levels are processed and realized in human's cognition. Therefore, it has advantages in interpreting the psychological principles and cognitive processes of textual coherence. Cognitive linguists have made some successful attempts to apply the cognitive principles to analyze textual coherence, such as Lakoff's metaphorical theory, Langacker's cognitive grammar, but there is not any uniform and complete theory as well as the accurate definition of coherence based on the principles. Therefore, it is believed that cognitive textual coherence analysis is abstract and lacks of maneuverability.Because text is multi-functional construction with multi-dimensional characteristics, we think that one theory alone could not explain all the factors in textual coherence comprehensively. Systemic functional grammar and cognitive linguistics which both belong to functionalism have great influence in textual coherence analysis. Therefore, it is believed that the complementary study is helpful to the development of both theories as well as textual coherence analysis.This thesis aims to find the advantages and disadvantages of systemic functional grammar and cognitive linguistics in textual coherence analysis in order to learn from each other. It will investigate in what way systemic functional grammar and cognitive linguistics could be complementary in textual coherence analysis with illustrations. At the same time, it will prove the feasibility and advantages of the complementary method with case study.