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Discourse analysis examines how whole texts are organised and structured — how they hang together and make sense as units larger than the sentence. It works at two complementary levels. First, it studies textual organisation: how a text achieves cohesion (the explicit linguistic links that tie its parts together) and coherence (the overall sense and logic a reader perceives). Second, it studies spoken interaction: how conversations are structured and managed through turn-taking, adjacency pairs, repair, and topic control. Both strands are central to AQA Paper 1, where you may be asked to analyse the structure of a written text, the dynamics of a spoken transcript, or — in the Section A comparison — texts of different modes side by side.
The governing question of discourse analysis is therefore not "what do these words mean?" but "how is this stretch of language put together, and what does its organisation achieve?" A text's structure is never neutral: the order in which information is released, the way one sentence is hooked to the next, who is allowed to speak and for how long — all of these are choices that construct meaning, manage relationships, and, as critical discourse analysts argue, encode power.
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) provided the foundational account, identifying types of cohesive tie grouped into grammatical and lexical cohesion.
| Device | Definition | Example |
|---|---|---|
| Reference | Using pronouns, demonstratives, or comparatives to refer to something mentioned elsewhere | "Sarah opened the door. She looked surprised." (pronoun reference) |
| Substitution | Replacing a word or phrase with a substitute form | "I'll have a coffee." "I'll have one too." ("one" substitutes for "a coffee") |
| Ellipsis | Omitting a word or phrase that can be understood from context | "Would you like tea or coffee?" "Coffee, please." (verb "I would like" is elided) |
| Conjunction | Using connective words to show relationships between clauses or sentences | "It rained all day. However, we still enjoyed the trip." |
| Device | Definition | Example |
|---|---|---|
| Repetition | Repeating the same word or phrase | "Education is important. Education transforms lives. Education is a right." |
| Synonymy | Using words with similar meanings | "The house was enormous. The building dominated the street." |
| Antonymy | Using words with opposite meanings to create contrast | "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times." |
| Hyponymy | Using words in a general-to-specific or specific-to-general relationship | "We saw several animals: lions, elephants, and giraffes." ("animals" is the superordinate; the others are hyponyms) |
| Collocation | Using words that commonly co-occur | "fish and chips," "law and order," "black and white" |
Key Definition: Cohesion (Halliday and Hasan, 1976) — the linguistic links that bind a text together, including grammatical devices (reference, substitution, ellipsis, conjunction) and lexical devices (repetition, synonymy, antonymy, hyponymy, collocation).
The analytical pay-off is not in naming a cohesive tie but in showing what its pattern does. Insistent lexical repetition of "education" across three short sentences, for instance, is not merely cohesive — it is rhetorically emphatic, hammering a single value home. A dense chain of pronoun reference can keep a human subject continuously before the reader's eye in a charity appeal. Where a writer chooses synonymy over repetition ("the house... the building... the property... the place"), they avoid monotony while sustaining the topic — a more subtle cohesive texture. Always ask what kind of reading experience the cohesive choices create.
A useful way to see lexical cohesion across a whole text is to trace its lexical chains — the strands of related vocabulary that run through it. A text about a hospital might sustain a chain of ward, consultant, diagnosis, treatment, recovery, building a coherent medical world. Where a single dominant semantic field runs through a text (for example, a sports report saturated with the vocabulary of warfare — attack, defend, onslaught, captured), the chain does representational work, framing its subject in a particular light. Identifying the dominant lexical chain and explaining the world it constructs is a strong whole-text discourse observation that connects cohesion to meaning and AO3 representation.
While cohesion is about the explicit linguistic links within a text, coherence is about whether the text makes sense as a whole to a reader. The two are distinct: a text can be cohesive yet incoherent (full of connectives but logically nonsensical), and — importantly — a text can be coherent with very few explicit cohesive devices, because the reader supplies the connections.
Key Definition: Coherence — the overall sense, logic, and meaningfulness of a text. A coherent text is one that the reader or listener can interpret as a unified, meaningful whole, even if explicit cohesive devices are minimal.
Coherence depends on:
The classic demonstration is a pair of sentences with no cohesive tie at all — "It's raining. Bring an umbrella." — which a reader nonetheless reads as perfectly coherent, inferring the causal link. Coherence is therefore partly in the reader, which is why context of reception and shared schemas belong to discourse analysis as much as to pragmatics.
The reverse case is just as instructive. Consider: "I bought a newspaper. Newspapers are printed on paper. Paper comes from trees. Trees are found in forests." Every sentence is tightly cohesive — each repeats a noun from the one before, forming a neat lexical chain — yet the passage is barely coherent, because it has no overall point or logical purpose; it simply slides associatively from word to word. This shows that cohesion and coherence are genuinely independent: a writer can manufacture surface connectivity without achieving real sense, and a sophisticated reader can sense when a text "hangs together" grammatically but goes nowhere. In analysis, then, do not assume that counting cohesive ties measures the quality of a text. Ask the deeper question: do these links serve a coherent purpose, and what is it?
Beyond local cohesion, whole texts follow recognisable structural patterns that readers expect and writers exploit:
| Structure | Description | Typical genres |
|---|---|---|
| Problem–solution | Establishes a problem, then offers a resolution | Advertising, persuasive writing, opinion columns |
| Chronological / sequential | Orders content by time or steps | Narratives, recipes, instructions, reports of events |
| Inverted pyramid | Most newsworthy information first, detail later | News reports |
| Compare–contrast | Sets two things against each other | Reviews, analytical essays |
| General–particular | Moves from a broad claim to specific examples | Academic and expository writing |
A text's macro-structure is itself analysable. A news report's inverted pyramid — headline, standfirst, the who/what/when in the first paragraph, then descending detail — suits readers who may stop at any point and a sub-editor who may cut from the bottom. An advertisement's problem–solution shape manufactures a need and then presents the product as its answer. Naming the overall organising principle, and relating it to the text's purpose and reading situation, demonstrates that you can analyse structure at the level of the whole text, not just the sentence.
Reference can point backwards or forwards in a text, or outside it altogether:
| Type | Direction | Definition | Example |
|---|---|---|---|
| Anaphoric | Backward | Refers back to something already mentioned | "The Prime Minister gave a speech. She outlined three key policies." ("She" refers back to "The Prime Minister") |
| Cataphoric | Forward | Refers forward to something yet to be mentioned | "This is what you need to know: the deadline has changed." ("This" refers forward to the information that follows) |
| Exophoric | Outside the text | Refers to something in the external context, not in the text itself | "Look at that!" (pointing to something in the physical environment) |
Anaphoric reference is the workhorse of cohesion, threading a topic through a text without tedious repetition. Cataphoric reference is more marked and is used deliberately for suspense, anticipation, or emphasis — the reader is forced onward to discover what the reference points to. Tabloid and feature headlines exploit it: "He was the man who changed everything" withholds the identity, baiting the reader to continue. Exophoric reference, pointing outside the text to the shared physical or cultural context, is common in spoken language and in multimodal texts (a caption's "this" pointing at the accompanying image), and its presence often signals a text rooted in a specific shared situation.
Discourse markers are words or phrases that organise and structure discourse, signalling relationships between parts of a text or managing the flow of conversation.
| Function | Written discourse markers | Spoken discourse markers |
|---|---|---|
| Adding information | furthermore, moreover, in addition, also | and, plus, as well, on top of that |
| Contrasting | however, nevertheless, on the other hand, conversely | but, though, mind you, then again |
| Cause/result | therefore, consequently, as a result, thus | so, that's why, cos |
| Sequencing | firstly, subsequently, finally, in conclusion | right, next, then, anyway |
| Exemplifying | for example, for instance, such as, namely | like, say, I mean |
| Topic management | regarding, with respect to, turning to | anyway, so, right, OK |
In spoken language, discourse markers serve additional interactional functions beyond organising content:
A key analytical distinction is whether a marker is doing textual work (organising the logical structure of the message — therefore, firstly) or interactional work (managing the social relationship and the mechanics of talk — you know, right, anyway). The formal written markers cluster at the textual end; the informal spoken ones often do both. Identifying which function a marker serves, rather than just labelling it a "discourse marker", lifts the analysis.
Sacks, Schegloff, and Jefferson (1974, A Simplest Systematics for the Organization of Turn-Taking for Conversation) developed the foundational model of turn-taking within the tradition of Conversation Analysis (CA). They argued that ordinary conversation, despite seeming chaotic, is governed by an orderly system that speakers operate moment by moment:
| Feature | Definition | Example |
|---|---|---|
| Overlap | Two speakers talking at the same time, often near a TRP | A: "I think we should—" B: "[yeah, I agree]" |
| Interruption | A speaker takes the floor before the current speaker has reached a TRP | A: "I was going to say—" B: "No, listen to me." |
| Latching | A new turn begins with no audible gap, marked "=" in transcripts | A: "I agree=" B: "=me too" |
| Adjacency pair | Two paired utterances where the first creates an expectation for the second | Question → Answer: "How are you?" → "Fine, thanks." |
| Backchannel | Short verbal or non-verbal responses that show the listener is engaged | "Mm-hm," "yeah," "right," "I see," nodding |
| Repair | Correcting or clarifying something in the talk | "I went to London — I mean Manchester — last week." |
Key Definition: Turn-taking (Sacks, Schegloff, and Jefferson, 1974) — the systematic way in which speakers in a conversation manage who speaks when, governed by rules about where (at a TRP) a speaker may begin or end a turn.
The crucial distinction between overlap and interruption is analytically loaded. Overlap is often cooperative — a listener coming in near a TRP to show agreement or finish a thought together (collaborative overlap). Interruption, by contrast, seizes the floor before a TRP and can be a power move, cutting the speaker off. A transcript in which one participant repeatedly interrupts while the other yields, backchannels, and rarely holds the floor reveals an asymmetrical interaction. Repair is also revealing: self-initiated self-repair (a speaker correcting their own slip) shows self-monitoring, whereas other-initiated repair (one speaker correcting another) can index expertise or control. Reading these patterns, rather than just labelling them, is the heart of conversation analysis.
Adjacency pairs are paired utterances in which the first part (the first pair part) creates a strong expectation for a particular type of second part:
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