Understanding Text Consistency: Global, Linear, and Local

Consistency in Text

Consistency is an inherent property of all text, which is the ability to form a unified whole in which the parts remain locked to each other in content. In other words, a text is coherent:

1. When presented with a meaningful unity or sense, be seen from the existence of a clear and specific topic (global or thematic coherence).
2. When the component parts are not isolated but are connected to each other, forming a structure (linear or structural coherence).
3. When the successive statements convey ideas or judgments that do not violate the basic principles of logic, common sense, or universal standards of human development (local coherence).

Global Consistency

All information contained in a text is built around a core sheet or issue closely connected to the speaker's communicative intent and acts as the backbone of other information of a secondary nature.

For example, a text should not talk about different issues that have nothing to do with each other. Instead of: "I like classical music, and tomorrow I have a review of literature. The euro is the currency of the European Union. The whale is a mammal," a text should:

To form a self-contained text, the sentences must be related to each other, subordinated to an idea. For example: "I like football, and my favorite player is Casillas. I plan to go with my friend Catherine to Wednesday's game. We already have tickets." The main idea or theme (my love of football) gives meaning to the text unit.

Linear or Structural Coherence

The contents of a text form a structure: the various component parts are significantly dependent on each other and also themselves constitute units of meaning whose components remain, in turn, dependent relationships between them.

A text is coherent because it has a clearly defined theme. For example, the role of football as a serious issue of global consistency. But also, this theme is developed in a number of sections and subsections, which are connected to each other in terms of ideas, forming a structure (linear or structural coherence). An example:

Subject: Sport (this corresponds to the overall coherence)

Structure:

1. Favorite Sport
2. My favorite interests
   1. Equipment
   2. Favorite player (this corresponds to linear coherence)

For a text to have an acceptable level of linear coherence, so that its structure is readily detectable by the receiver, two conditions are necessary:

1. An appropriate choice of information. Textual coherence is broken when the information is excessive (repeating the same ideas or musings are incurred, the issue is not progressing) or insufficient (too little or too concise).
2. Proper management of ideas. Consistency is also affected when the information is not managed with logical criteria, so that the secondary ideas must be subordinate to the principal.

Local Coherence

Consistency not only affects the theme and structure. Successive statements that form a text must satisfy three basic principles:

1. Compliance with universal standards of human knowledge. A text is coherent if the information transmitted does not contradict the knowledge that speakers have of the world and things. Accommodation to those general principles of knowledge prevents us from making impossible or bizarre judgments.
2. Observation of the elementary laws of logic. A text is coherent when its content does not violate the network of implications and assumptions that underlie many statements and are not platitudes but shared by all speakers.
3. Adaptation to the frame of speech. There are texts whose content conflicts with our knowledge of the world; however, they are consistent if we consider the situation in which they occur.