You are viewing a free preview of this lesson.
Subscribe to unlock all 10 lessons in this course and every other course on LearningBro.
Discourse analysis examines how whole texts are organised and structured — how they achieve cohesion (the linguistic links that tie a text together) and coherence (the overall sense and logic of a text). It also encompasses the study of spoken interaction, including how conversations are structured and managed. Discourse analysis operates at the level above the sentence, looking at how sentences and utterances combine to form meaningful texts.
Cohesion refers to the linguistic devices that connect different parts of a text, creating a sense of unity and flow. The linguists M.A.K. Halliday and Ruqaiya Hasan (1976, Cohesion in English) identified five main types of cohesive device:
Subscribe to continue reading
Get full access to this lesson and all 10 lessons in this course.