REFERENCE AS A COHESIVE DEVICE IN ENGLISH AND VIETNAMESE DISCOURSE

(Ms Nguyen)

Language has often been defined as a system of arbitrary symbols used for human communication (Everlyn, 1992). How humans use that system for communication in social contexts has been a problem of great concern to linguists of all times. Linguists have examined how human beings employ forms of language to exchange thoughts, ideas, as well as to express different shades of sentiments.

 

For a long time, many linguists did believe that grammar at sentence level or syntax played a decisive role in conveying ideas, thoughts (Tran Ngoc Them, 1985). In this sense, sentence was considered the largest linguistic unit or construction, i.e., it was believed to be impossibly part of any larger linguistic unit. However, real life communication has proved that to express more complicated thoughts or ideas, we need to combine sentence together to create larger units of discourse.

 

Only during the last few decades have some linguists become aware of the kind of grammar beyond the sentence boundary. They have studied textual linguistics of some kinds of linking system in discourse. Language is then considered more than a group of words, but actually a connected stream of sentences. Communication is possible only when sentences or stretches of language, considered in their full textual context, hang together so that discourse is meaningful and unified for users. So, what is the resource for discourse constructions? The answer to this question is the knowledge of cohesion and coherence – an essential resource in discourse construction – that makes sentences take on a special value or meaning.

 

Although this aspect of textual grammar has recently been discussed in some linguistic books, it has, to a great extent, been neglected in language teaching and learning. Too often, teachers and course materials have not paid sufficient attention to cohesion between sentences (intersentential cohesion), which is a key for cohesion of texts. They have focused on cohesion within sentence (intrasentential cohesion). As a result, learners of English are not aware of the role and usage of cohesive devices in writing and speaking in English. They fail to express themselves effectively or produce coherent discourse.

No matter what level cohesion exists at – within sentences or between sentences, it is advisable to acquire the knowledge of cohesive devices as different means to achieve cohesion in a discourse. Halliday and Hasan’s system (1976) distinguishes five major types of grammatical cohesive ties: reference, substitution, ellipsis, conjunctions and lexical ties. Among those, reference is one of the most apparent devices showing different semantic relationships and contributing to create the accuracy and coherent unity within the text.

 

Reference is regarded by Halliday and Hasan (1976: 31) as:

. . . the specific nature of the information that is signaled for retrieval. In the case of reference the information to be retrieved is the referential meaning, the identity of the particular thing or class of things that is being referred to; and the cohesion lies in the continuity of reference, whereby the same thing enters into the discourse a second time (Schnese, 2001).

The term reference is traditionally used in semantics for the relationship that exists between a word and what it points to in the real world. The reference of "chair" would, therefore, be a particular chair that is being identified on a particular occasion. In Halliday and Hasan's model of cohesion, reference is used in a similar but more restricted way. Instead of denoting a direct relationship between words and extra-linguistic objects, reference is limited here to the relationship of identity which exists between two linguistic expressions. For example, in

Mrs. Thatcher has resigned. She announced her decision this morning.

The pronoun she points to Mrs. Thatcher within the textual world itself. Reference, in the textual rather than the semantic sense, occurs when the reader has to retrieve the identity of what is being talked about by referring to another expression in the immediate context. The resulting cohesion lies in the continuity of reference, whereby the same thing enters into the discourse a second time.

So, reference is a device which allows the reader or hearer to trace participants, entities, events, etc. in a text. In any discourse, reference help trace back the development of a proposition or an idea. Therefore, a full acquisition of reference in English is of vital importance for students of English.