A Theoretical Framework Of Coherence In Electronic Conversational Discourse

With the rapid development of computing and Internet technology, a new mode of communication, termed electronic discourse, has emerged and become more and more popular. Its emergence has not only changed and renewed the channel of human communication, but also consequently expanded the scope of language and linguistic research, especially discourse analysis. The electronic conversational discourse is one subtype of the electronic discourse. As a discourse type most frequently taking place in the common Internet life, the electronic conversational discourse is a computer-mediated and text-based synchronous communication mode with special characteristics, as compared with those in both spoken and written discourse.The analysis of electronic discourse has so far become a wide topic in linguistic researches. Many linguistic researchers have designed some projects on electronic discourse. However, fewer researchers have paid attention to the questions that since people can make a successful synchronous computer-mediated communication, what factors guarantee the success of conversational communication, what devices make the electronic discourse coherent, and how much do these devices contribute to the success of communication?By analyzing the internal and external cohesive mechanisms that contribute to constructing coherence of the electronic conversational discourse, the writer hopes to build up a feasible framework for studying coherence in the electronic conversational discourse, so as to make a way to help realize successful synchronous online conversational communications.