Structural Cohesion in Technical Texts

Abstract

Although Halliday and Hasan claim that cohesion is a semantic relation, this paper suggests that cohesion might be better understood as a general perceptual phenomenon. Specifically, repetitions of both structural and semantic textual elements are analogous to repetitions of visual patterns in that both provide a uniform background against which distinctions are foregrounded and therefore more easily perceived. This article supplements Halliday and Hasan's categories of cohesive devices by discussing three types of structural cohesion based on an analysis of technical texts. First, cohesion produced through thematic progression (i.e., the repetition of topics and comments) is demonstrated; second, cohesion produced through parallelism (i.e., the repetition of syntactic structure) is illustrated; and finally cohesion produced with graphic devices (i.e., the repetition of typography, enumerators, and chart elements) is discussed.