2.3.1 Cohesion

The term ‘cohesion’ refers to the surface links in text. Cohesion has a vital role in creating the unity of text. A non-cohesive text may result in the reader or listener losing their concentration. The recipient will not be able to obtain the message intended if the information conveyed to him/her is not linked together. This in turn will lead to a lack of communication. Cohesion carries the receiver forward.

A text may attain cohesiveness by means of the combination of different syntactical elements, phrases, clauses and sentences. It may also do so by means of various devices, such as lexical recurrence, parallelism, lexical or structural repetition, paraphrase, pro-forms, ellipsis, contra junctions, reference (for example, anaphora and exophora), and substitution.

2.3.2 Coherence

Coherence refers to links beyond the text. If a text is not coherent, it does not yield any sense. Hence, it is a “non-sense” text. Continuity, which gives sense to text, is the foundation for text coherence.

Unlike cohesion, coherence is concerned with what is beyond the surface text. In other words, it looks at the internal textual world.

In so far as coherence has to do with what is beyond the text, the cognitive processes will have a vital role in taking in the information given. Beaugrande and Dressler (1981) handle the discussion of this concept from an appropriate psychological and philosophical viewpoint.

The role of the language receiver in building up the internal textual world plays a vital role. There are various factors participating in this process, among which are:

1. Text interaction, i.e. interaction of more than one piece of information in one text.

2. Text and text interaction, i.e. one text may depend totally or partially on the previous text.

3. Text and receiver interaction; that is how he/she interprets text according to his/her background, previous knowledge of the theme of discussion, psychological status at the time of dealing with the text, target in tackling the text, hypothesis about what the text topic is, etc.

2.3.3 Intentionality

Intentionality and acceptability relate to the attitude of the text users: the producer and the recipient respectively, during the process of actualising the text. Intentionality subsumes the text producer’s attitude that the presented configuration is to be considered not only as a cohesive and coherent entity but also as manifesting relevance to the plans and goals of the producer. By relevance is meant the capability of the text of affecting the chances of the plans and goals. “Plan” is here employed in the sense of a set of steps configured with the intention of leading to a specific goal. “Goal” is definable as a future state of the world whose attainment is envisaged and intended to be brought about by the actualisation of the text.

It should be noted that intentionality possesses a range of “tolerance” such that it remains in effect even when the principles of cohesion and coherence are not fully satisfied, and when the plan does not lead to or attain the envisaged goal.