Cohesion refers to the linguistic elements that help connect ideas in a text, making it coherent and unified. It is generally categorized into grammatical cohesion and lexical cohesion.

a. Grammatical Cohesion

According to Halliday and Hasan (1976), grammatical cohesion involves four main devices: reference, ellipsis, substitution, and conjunction.

• Reference is a semantic relationship that ensures meaning continuity in a text. It includes:
  • Personal reference (e.g., he, she, they),
  • Demonstrative reference (e.g., this, that),
  • Comparative reference (e.g., more, similarly).
• Ellipsis occurs when elements already mentioned are omitted but still understood from context. It can be:
  • Nominal, verbal, or clausal (e.g., “The University of Alabama will be the university of choice for the best (∅) and brightest students.”).
• Substitution replaces one linguistic item with another (e.g., “I need a pen. Do you have one?”).
• Conjunctions connect clauses or sentences and express logical relationships. They include:
  • Additive: and, in addition, also
  • Adversative: but, however, on the other hand
  • Causal: because, therefore, thus
  • Temporal: then, finally, at the same time

b. Lexical Cohesion

Lexical cohesion refers to how vocabulary choices contribute to textual unity. It is mainly achieved through:

• Reiteration, which includes:
  • Repetition of the same word,
  • Synonyms (e.g., beautiful – attractive),
  • General words (e.g., person, place, thing).
• Meronymy, which refers to the part-whole relationship (e.g., tree – branch, trunk, leaf).
• Collocation, which involves words that commonly occur together in a language. Examples include:
  • Adjective + noun: fast food
  • Verb + noun: run out of money
  • Typical word pairs: men and women

These cohesive devices ensure that ideas within a text “stick together,” improving clarity and comprehension for readers or listeners.

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