A Study On The Features Of Cohesion And Coherence In Lord Of The Flies

Cohesion and coherence are the most important fundamental textual criteria and the core of discourse study. Cohesion realizes the connection between the linguistic elements and the proposition they express while coherence refers to the general effects of communicative acts. Halliday & Hasan (1976) propose the cohesion theory, which lays great weight on syntactical level. Chinese linguists, Hu Zhuanglin (1994) and Zhang Delu (2003) further develop the cohesion theory and advance a multi-level cohesion and coherence system.Lord of the Flies, whose language is succinct, accurate and? imaginative, are always analyzed from the perspectives from human nature, symbolism and narrative structure. There are few studies on the discourse analysis. The present study aims to find out the features of cohesion and coherence in Lord of the Flies written by William Golding.The study adopts Halliday & Hasan's (1976) cohesion theory to analyze the non-structure cohesion and coherence across sentences in the novel. And the supplement about the cohesion theory proposed by Hu Zhuanglin (1994) and Zhang Delu (2003) are applied to analyze the structural cohesion and coherence in the novel. A large amount of samples are analyzed in this thesis based on non-structure cohesive devices including reference, substitution, ellipsis, conjunction and lexical cohesion and structural cohesive devices including theme-rheme structure, information structure and parallel structure. The study adopts quantitative and qualitative analysis methods. The quantitative study is used to analyze the frequency of each cohesive device. The qualitative study is used to reflect how these cohesive devices guarantee text integrity.The findings show that the novel-Lord of the Flies embodies various cohesive devices. From the perspective of non-structure cohesion, lexical cohesion is the most commonly used, followed by reference and ellipsis. This feature of non-structure cohesion is related to the writing techniques of this novel. In terms of lexical cohesion, the integrity of the novel is achieved by a large number of lexical chains, which help to establish the context of the novel. According to the context, readers can interpret the novel logically. With regard to the frequent use of reference, it is closely related to the complexity of plots in the novel. The rational use of reference may contribute to a better understanding of the novel. Ellipsis appears mostly in the conversations which are conducted in a specific context. Even if some information is not stated explicitly, conversations can still go smoothly under the specific context. Therefore, ellipsis can avoid repetition and achieve coherence. From the perspective of structure cohesion, the use of parallel structure is a feature of this novel. Parallelism, which can intensify the artistic effect of the novel, goes through the whole text. In order to ensure that the novel has great textual coherence, multi-patterns thematic progression is used, which reflects the development of plots in the novel.The study provides some useful skills for readers to appreciate literary works. At the same time, it is suggested that readers should establish cohesive chains in their mind when they read. The interactions among these cohesive chains can express the theme of discourse.