Text Cohesion and Coherence: Structure, Types and Features

Cohesion

Cohesion is the set of formal relations, based on grammatical rules, that govern the ordering and semantic dependence of the syntactic elements of a text. These elements are then used as the basis for the syntactic and lexical-semantic properties of the text.

Surface structuring is essential in any text, although it is not always the same for every text. All texts have internal cohesion and external cohesion, and both are inseparable. The internal structure and the formal structure are created throughout the entire text. Cohesion refers to the text as a whole: sentences and utterances are not isolated, unrelated units laid end to end, but related means that follow different grammatical relations.

Cohesion is achieved through the following resources:

• Anaphora and cataphora
• Lexical cohesion, including lexical repetition, synonymy, identity of reference, hyperonymy and hyponymy, antonyms, lexical families, and metaphorical, metonymic or allusive relations
• Pragmatic relations, which support the semantic stability of the relations between the terms
• Temporal correlation between speech and the use of verbs
• Connectors: additive, disjunctive, distributive, explanatory, adversative, concessive, conditional, causal, final
• Proper names
• Ellipsis

Humanistic Texts

Humanistic texts deal with the studies related to human beings, such as human thought, social relations or language. Within these, we can distinguish those that belong to the social sciences, whose techniques and specifics are more precise, and those that belong to the human sciences, which are more speculative and abstract.

The types of text that predominate in the human sciences are exposition and argumentation, although the most frequent is a combination of both. Exposition dominates when the text has an objective approach and aims to analyze certain contents, while argumentation predominates when the author proposes valuations or positions.

Both organizational patterns can present any content in the following ways: analytical-synthesizing, or framed in parallel. In humanistic texts, narration may also appear.

Description and valuations in the human sciences are more abundant because they do not rely on data recorded in reality, but on acceptable limits. The logical premises between essays and humanistic texts are blurred compared to scientific rigor.

Humanistic texts necessarily cite the sources consulted. In humanistic texts, schools or currents may use different terminologies with distinct meanings.

The humanities use natural languages exclusively, which are inevitably imprecise and open, and therefore have multiple meanings.

Scientific and Technical Texts

Human knowledge has been divided into science, whose object of study is objective reality, and the humanities, which focus on the human being and its study.

Scientific texts function to explain reality, so that the receiver acquires knowledge. Technical texts, on the other hand, apply scientific knowledge to act on reality. Their objective is for the receiver to know how to do something.

The aim of science is to formulate universal, objective and true statements. These characteristics require a language capable of expressing concepts with precision and clarity. Its referential function is unique, since its vocabulary must be informative, absolutely denotative and unequivocal.

Scientific and technical texts belong to diverse classes or genres, ranging from highly specialized and difficult texts intended for specialists, to those of different levels of popularization or even scientific dissemination.

In these texts, exposition and description predominate, although argumentation and narration may appear to a lesser extent, especially when a chronological approach is followed.

Technical texts are characterized by instruction, whose objective is to teach the receiver how to do something. The order of the information depends on the method, which may be deductive, analytical-structured, or deductive-synthetic. Alternative methods may also be used, such as time-based or framed structures.

Suitability

Suitability is a characteristic of texts that are well constructed from a communicative standpoint. The result reflects the choices made by the speaker or author, taking into account the particularities of the different communicative factors involved, such as the issuer and the receiver. A text that does not account for the characteristics of its function, language level, choice of code and variety of speech is not suitable.

Coherence

Coherence is the property of a text that allows it to be understood as a communicative unity, rather than as a succession of disconnected elements.

Coherence is based on a theme, subject or global framework that integrates the text and that the receiver can identify as its fundamental core. The receiver grasps the core information that gives meaning to the different statements.

Linear consistency means that the sequences of a text follow one another and acquire sense in relation to the general theme.

The following aspects intervene in consistency: the subject, the structure of the text (closed, open, in medias res, circular, linear or episodic), and the text models: narrative, descriptive, argumentative or expository, which may also include monologue, dialogue, and various types of narrator.

Coherence depends on the choice of theme, the orderly sequencing of ideas, presuppositions, implications and pragmatic knowledge.