| The use of coherence devices is an important aspect of text research. It is under constant investigations by scholars in the filed. The use of cohesive devices in texts of different styles is influenced and constrained by linguistic features of these styles and various expressive and communicative needs. The purpose of the paper is to describe the difference in cohesive device uses and investigate possible reasons behind.The relationship between cohesion and coherence has been a controversial issue in linguistics, especial in the area of systematic-functional linguistics. The author believes that coherence is the first-order characteristic of a text, based on which cohesive devices are used. Assuming texts are meaningfully coherent wholes, the author is interested in studying the different uses of various cohesive devices.Through investigations in dynamic reasons of cohesive device uses in texts, the author has found that choices of adopting specific cohesive devices are constrained by the relevance theory and communicative and expressive needs. The hypothesis of the study is that texts of different styles are various in devices used to make sure sentences cohere together.Adopting Halliday's language variety theory and descriptions of contextual factors which influence specific linguistic features by Crystal and Davy as her foundations, the author follows a quantitative approach to describe and compare frequency counts of major cohesive devices (reference, substitution, ellipsis, conjunction, reiteration, and implicit coherence) in Chinese texts of different styles. Altogether 80 Chinese texts were sampled for this study: 20 in the style of news report, 20 political comment, 20 conversation, and 20 narratives. Two one-way ANOVA analyses were conducted to look for differences in uses of cohesive devices in the four text styles.Statistical results are consistent with the author's hypothesis. Cohesive devices are used differently in texts of different styles. |
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