A Comparative Study On The Cohesive Function Of Lexical Repetition In Non-narrative Texts

Cohesion and coherence are very important in discourse analysis and are considered as foundation and criteria for other analyses. Cohesion is categorized into grammatical and lexical cohesion which is achieved by the selection of vocabulary. There are various types of lexical cohesive devices but they can all be put under lexical repetition. Lexical repetition is considered crucial in contributing to creating texture.This research, based on Halliday and Hasan’s cohesion theory, is a comparative analysis on the use of lexical repetition between the full-mark TEM eight compositions written by English majors and commentaries in TIME written by English native speakers by employing Krisztina’s categorization of lexical repetition and Hoey’s lexical repetition analysis model.The results of the study show a notable discrepancy in the use of the nine types of lexical repetition between full-mark TEM eight compositions and commentaries by English native speakers:The simplification and unevenness of distribution in lexical repetition appear in the use of lexical repetition in full-mark compositions, while diversification and evenness in the use of lexical repetition can be observed in commentaries by English native speakers; There is57.5%of sentences with lexical repetition items in full-mark TEM eight compositions and39.2%of such sentences are found in the commentaries; The central and basic sentences are1.95%and54.2%and18.9%and33.3%in the TEM eight compositions and in the commentaries respectively; The percentage of the marginal sentences in the two groups of texts are very close, with43.9%in the compositions and47.8%in the commentaries. The findings of the research can be of help to English language teaching and learning, English writing in particular.