The Use of Grammatical Cohesive Devices in Ernest Hemyngway’s Novel “The Old Man and The Sea”: A Discourse Analysis

Pages:5-7
Montgomery Howwar (Department of Linguistics, Aligarh Muslim University, Aligarh)

The current investigated paper is actually related to discourse analysis. As matter of fact, either written or spoken discourse must be stretched in a way that ensures its cohesion via using the cohesive devices. The word “cohesive” is defined in Longman Dictionary of contemporary English as an adjective, connected in a reasonable way to form a whole. Michael Halliday, one of the linguists credited with the development of systemic linguistics and functional grammar, showed a great deal of concern with the Principles of connectivity, which bind a text together and force co-interpretation. To Halliday, a text is viewed as any authentic stretch of written or spoken language. Halliday(1976) opined that cohesion is semantic rather than grammatical. Cohesion; therefore, can be defined as a term used to describe the way in which components of a text are mutually connected either grammatically or lexically. De Beaugrande and Dressler (1981) pointed out that “ surface components depend upon each other according to grammatical forms and conventions, such that cohesion rests upon grammatical dependencies”. To Halliday and Hassan (1976:11), cohesion exists “ where the 590 interpretaion of any item in the discourse requires making reference to some other item in the discourse”. Indeed, these authors have given the most comprehensive and adequate treatment of the subject (cohesion in text) and has become the standard text in this area.