Cohesion

Here’s an example of a writing sample that uses a variety of cohesion strategies. It’s a short essay, written for a broad academic audience in a U publication, about the current state of the English language. To clarify the analysis that follows, we’ve underlined a few of the transition devices.

Teaching (and Learning) Englishes

Jay Jordan

University Writing Program

I teach English-language writing, and I’m a native speaker of the English language. Being a native speaker might seem to be an excellent basic qualification for my job: at the very least, it should necessarily make me the model of English usage. However, it actually makes me very unusual.

According to The British Council, approximately 1.5 billion people around the world use English. Roughly 375 million of them are like me: they have learned English since birth, and most of them live in countries like the US, Canada, Great Britain, Australia, and New Zealand that are traditional English-language centers.

That still leaves over a billion English users. 375 million of those people live in countries that were British colonies until the middle of the last century, such as Ghana, India, Kenya, and Nigeria.

But the largest number of English speakers—50% of the global total—are in countries that were not British colonies and that don’t have much of a history with English. Count China, Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, and South Korea among them. So, most English speakers aren’t where we might expect them to be. In addition, they’re not using English in ways we might expect, either, which helps explain why I’m referring to them as “users” and not “writers” or “speakers.” Most people who use English around the world do so in specific circumstances in order to get very specific things done. Many Indians, for instance, might use English in publications and to transact business over the phone, Hindi in a government office, Gujarati at the store, and maybe one of several other languages at home.

What does this mean for my teaching and research? People and information move around globally more so now than ever, and that movement makes diverse uses of English feed back into the US. As students at the U (and the U is not alone) become more culturally and linguistically diverse, I often have as much to learn from them as I have to teach them.

This short example uses the following cohesion strategies:

• The writer does use several stock transitions: in fact, one of them —“however”—helps introduce the surprising sentence at the end of the introduction by clearly signposting something different or unexpected. And, as another example, the fourth paragraph starts with “but,” which signposts another transition to information that contradicts what comes before.
• Pronouns appear to be the most common cohesion device in the essay. At the start of the third paragraph, for example, “that” stands in for the statistic in the previous paragraph, which would be hard to write out all over again. But “that” also carries forward the sense of the statistic into the next paragraph. And “those people” carries the statistic forward to the next sentence. (Really, “those” is actually an adjective that modifies “people,” but it’s enough like a pronoun that we’re handling it like one here.)
• Repetition is also common in this essay. Words are repeated—or at least, put very close to other words that are very similar in meaning. “English” and “British colonies” clearly help tie together the third and fourth paragraphs. And sentences show parallelism. See, for instance, paragraph four: “So, most English speakers aren’t where we would expect them to be. In addition, they’re not using English in ways we might expect, either.”

The following video outlines cohesiveness in writing:

Sources:

“Cohesion: What do People Mean When They Say My Writing Doesn’t “Flow”.” By Lumen Learning. Retrieved from: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/englishcomp2kscopexmaster/chapter/cohesion-what-do-people-mean-when-they-say-my-writing-doesnt-flow-open2010writingchapter9-pdf/ Licensed under: CC-BY Adapted by The American Women’s College

“Cohesion and Coherence in Writing.” By WuKung. Retrieved from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lp7hzuOy4tk Licensed under: CC-BY