A Study of Cohesive Devices in 'Death of a Son'
Abstract
A discourse, whether spoken or written, is not just a text, as some might think. When going deeply within the lines of a discourse, one would find some significant ties that make it relate one piece to another. Cohesion is that technique used to achieve unity in any text. Cohesion is the most important criterion of textuality. Thus, when the interpretation of one textual element (a word located in one sentence) depends on another item in the text (a word usually but not necessarily in another sentence), Cohesion plays the role of connecting one element to the other (Hameed, 2008: 1). To make any text coherent, it is necessary to use certain devices that would bind the different phrases and sentences of the text. So, cohesive markers may not accurately acquire without referring to other surrounding text features (i.e. linguistic or nonlinguistic), which singly or jointly constrain and influence the selection of cohesive features as well as their deployment in the text. After showing the method used to achieve the aim of this study, it presents a theoretical view about text, cohesion and cohesive markers. Then, the study illustrates how these markers make any text coherent, as examined in the sample of this study