VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI
UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES
FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES
_______________

PHẠM PHƢƠNG LAN A STUDY ON LEXICAL COHESIVE DEVICES FROM SOME
READING TEXTS OF THE COURSE BOOK "ENGLISH FOR
BUSINESS STUDIES" AND PEDAGOGICAL IMPLICATIONS FOR
TEACHING ENGLISH FOR THIRD YEAR STUDENTS AT TRADE
UNION UNIVERSITY
(Nghiên cứu các phƣơng tiện liên kết từ vựng trong một số bài đọc của
giáo trình “Tiếng Anh Quản trị Kinh doanh” và gợi ý cho việc giảng dạy
tiếng Anh cho sinh viên năm thứ ba trƣờng Đại học Công đoàn)
M.A. Minor Programme Thesis Field: English Linguistics
Code: 60 22 15
Hanoi, 2012

Hanoi, 2012
iv

TABLE OF CONTENTS
Acknowledgement iii
Abstract iv
Table of contents v
List of abbreviations vii
List of tables and figures vii
PART A: INTRODUCTION 1
1. Rationale of the study 1
2. Scope of the study 3
3. Aims of the study 3
4. Research questions 3
5. Methods of the study 3
6. Organization of the study 4
PART B: DEVELOPMENT 5
Chapter 1: Theoretical background 5
1.1. Discourse and discourse analysis 5
1.1.1. Discourse 5
1.1.2. Discourse and Text 5
1.1.3. Spoken and written discourse 6
1.1.4. Discourse Analysis 7
1.1.5. Discourse Context 8
1.1.5.1. Context 8
1.1.5.2. Context of situation 9
1.2. Cohesion and coherence 10

2. Pedagogical implications 36
3. Limitations of the study 38
4. Suggestions for further research 38
REFERENCES 40
Appendices I
Appendix I II
Appendix II III
Appendix III IV
Appendix IV V
Appendix V VI
Appendix VI VII
Appendix VII VIII
vi

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS
BE: Business English
GE: General English
EBS: English for Business Studies
ESP: English for Specific Purpose
TUU: Trade Union University LIST OF TABLES AND FIGURES
Table 1 - EBS texts chosen for analysis
Table 2 - The frequency of appearance of lexical cohesive devices in sample texts
Table 3 - Frequency of appearance of repetition
Table 4 - Frequency of appearance of synonymy
Table 5 - Frequency of occurrence of antonyms
Table 6 - Frequency of occurrence of sub-types of antonymy
Table 7 - Frequency of occurrence of superordinate

three parts:
1. An informative reading text giving an overview of a particular topic with various
comprehension and vocabulary exercises and discussion activities.
2. Either listening exercises or shorter authentic reading passage.
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3. An additional case study, role play, discussion activity or writing exercise.
The listening part provides authentic interviews with business people and economists who
are British and American native speakers and non-native speakers from Germany, Italy,
Switzerland, India and Malaysia. The listening exercises that follow are often note taking
and question answering, very few tasks have multiple choice questions. Therefore it is
sometimes difficult for TUU's students to follow. Consequently, exploiting the listening
part is unfeasible for TUU's learners. For speaking task, it is not practical for a class of 60
and over 60 students where the teacher's role of a conductor is vague. That is, it is quite
hard for teachers to cover all speaking activities. Moreover, TUU's students are not
competent and self-conscious enough to fulfill the given task themselves. Therefore,
learning speaking possibly turn out to private talking and disorder in class. As for writing,
the demands for the task are sometimes excessive for students. Grammar is quite important
in text comprehension. However, most grammatical structures and rules are taught in GE
and students can recall them easily without the teacher's explanation.
Yet, there are still complaints from our students about the difficulties they encounter while
learning reading passages in BE. On the one hand, it may derive from students'
psychological reasons. For most of them, this is the first time they learn ESP and an ESP
reading text which is full of economic and business terms in business context may be a
challenge. Consequently, they are not willing to study attentively. On the other hand,
students find it is hard job to remember so many new terms and obtain a general
comprehension of the text.
The above reasons have induced me to conduct a research on reading part, as this part is
also a main part of every unit in EBS course book. With some experience in teaching GE
and ESP for BE students, the researcher realize the crucial role of coherence and cohesion

text 5: Taxation; Sample text 6: The business cycle. All the lexical cohesive items of each
type of lexical cohesion (reiteration and collocation) and its subtypes occur in the six texts
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are identified and calculated. The total number of each type is then converted into
percentage to compare within a text or among the categories and according to the
analytical purposes.
6. Organization of the study
This thesis includes three main parts
The INTRODUCTION part introduces the rationale, the scope, the aims, the
research questions, the research methodology and the design of the study.
The DEVELOPMENT comprises of two chapters
- Chapter 1: provides a thorough theoretical background of three main
terminologies: discourse, discourse analysis, coherence and cohesion.
- Chapter 2: presents the analysis of lexical cohesive devices in some
reading texts in BE course book for the third year students at Trade Union
University
The CONCLUSION shows a recapitulation of the study, implications for teaching
and learning BE, limitations of the study and suggestions for further research. - 5 -

PART B: DEVELOPMENT

constituting a coherent unit, such as a sermon, argument or narrative". (Crystal, 1992:25,
cited in Vân, 2006:14)
To some other scholars, text and discourse should refer to the same subject matter and may
be used interchangeably. Halliday and Hasan implied "discourse" when defining "text":
"the word Text is used in linguistics to refer to any passage, spoken or written, of whatever
length that does form a unified whole. A text is a collection of related sentences, with a
single sentence as the limiting case, a semantic unit. This unit is related to a clause or a
sentence by realization, i.e. a text is realized by sentences. The expression of the semantic
unity of the text lies in the cohesion among the sentences of which it is composed."
(Halliday & Hasan,1976:1)
Vân (2006) had seen the problem of distinguishing the two terms. He argued that we really
do not need to distinguish them as "text or discourse is an instance of language in use; this
means that no text occurs without a context , any attempt to distinguish text from
discourse will result in complicating the problem of terminology". Based on the definition
of Halliday and Hasan (1989), he confirmed that "discourse (or text) is a unit of meaning
and functional. It is functional in the sense that it occurs in a context of situation. In terms
of size, a discourse may be realized by a word, a phrase, a clause or a sentence, a
paragraph, a cluster of paragraphs, a book, or even the whole library of books."
For the purpose of this study, the author would like to take the viewpoint of Hoàng Văn
Vân (2006) about text and discourse as the base. Therefore, the words text and discourse
are treated interchangeably.
1.1.3. Spoken and written discourse
Although spoken and written discourse share some similar features; for example, they are
used "to get things done, to provide information and to entertain" (Nunan, 1993:8); it is
clear that spoken and written discourse are different in other features. David Nunan (1993)
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made distinction between spoken and written discourse based on three categories:
grammar, lexical density and situation.
Written discourse, linguistically, may include internally complex clauses while in spoken

Discourse analysis is undoubtedly the study of language in use of both written and spoken
form. It includes examining both form and function of the language. It analyses linguistic
features that characterize the social and cultural factors that help in our perception and
interpretation of different texts. While a discourse analysis of spoken text might focus on
turn-taking, overlapping, adjacency pairs or repair, written text of this kind studies the
topic development and cohesion across sentences.
1.1.5. Discourse Context
1.1.5.1. Context
In discourse analysis, context plays an undeniably important role in the interpretation of
discourse. Therefore its concept should be stated clearly. Halliday (1991) defined context
as "the events that are going on around" when people speak and write. G Yule (1983)
referred context to the "physical context" or the "linguistic context" in which words are
used. Nunan (1993: 7,8) claimed that "context refers to the situation giving rise to the
discourse, and within which the discourse is embedded." He considered that context
included two categories: linguistic and non-linguistic. Linguistic context is any language
surrounding or accompanying the piece of discourse under analysis while non-linguistic
context involves the type of communicative event; the topic; the purpose of the event; the
setting; the participants and the relationships between them and the background knowledge
and assumptions underlying the communicative event.
Context is therefore the environment in which a discourse occurs. Context refers to both
linguistic and non-linguistic aspects. Context can add more general information about the
nature of the text, the period written, fiction or non-fiction, the age and nationality of the
writer. Apparently, in order to make a communicative event become successful, listeners
or readers have to know the context in which the discourse occurs. This helps
understanding the text/discourse more thoroughly. The context of situation may be
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captured by readers' guessing the underlied assumption or using their background
knowledge.
In discourse analysis, context helps define reference, establish and accumulate

explained as comprehension is considered a process that happens within the reader, or at
least, depends on the cohesion and coherence of texts. Cohesion exists within a text and is
not the same as coherence which is something that the reader establishes during the process
of reading. Cohesion creates semantic continuity and therefore it permits coherence and
comprehensibility. The more explicit the cohesive relations are, the easier the text is to
understand.
Tanskanen (1984) refers cohesion to "the grammatical and lexical elements on the surface
of a text which can form connections between parts of the text" (Tanskanen, 1984: 7).
Halliday & Hasan (1976) consider "the concept of cohesion is a semantic one; it refers to
relations of meaning that exist within the text, and that define it as a text". According to
them, cohesion occurs when the interpretation of some element in the discourse is
dependent on that of another. The one presupposes the other. When this happens, a
relation of cohesion is set up, and the two elements, the presupposing and the presupposed,
are thereby at least potentially integrated into a text.
1.2.2. Coherence
Halliday & Hasan (1976) claimed "coherence is the underlying organizer which makes the
words and sentences into a unified discourse that conforms to a consistent world picture.
Coherent text is meaningful, unified and gives the impression of "hanging together"".
In grammar, the sentences that don't fit together in a sensible way, though there's nothing
wrong with the individual sentences, are called ungrammatical. In text and discourse
analysis, a text which combines such ungrammatical sentences is considered incoherent.
One of the key issues in text and discourse analysis is to find exactly what it is that makes
some text hang together while other texts are incoherent.
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Palmer (1983b) wrote: "coherence refers to the rhetorical devices, to ways of writing and
speaking that bring about order and unity and emphasis". Coherence can obtain on the
basis of relevance, the co-operative principle, the common shared background knowledge
between participants in a speech event, and how a discourse is structured as well.
1.2.3. Cohesion and coherence

1.3.2. Classification
Cohesion is one of the text properties that contributes to the organization of discourse. The
term refers to the connectedness of the surface elements in the text. The concept of
cohesion is a semantic one; it refers to relations of meaning that exist within the text, and
that define it as a text. Cohesion occurs when interpretation of some element in the
discourse is dependent on that of another. Cohesion is part of a system of language. The
potential for cohesion lies in the systematic resources of reference, ellipsis, and so on that
is built into the language itself. Cohesion is partly expressed through the grammar and
partly through vocabulary. We can refer them therefore to grammatical cohesion and
lexical cohesion (Halliday and Hasan, 1976).
Halliday and Hasan (1976) identified five types of cohesion: reference cohesion,
substitution cohesion, ellipsis cohesion, conjunctive cohesion, and lexical cohesion. The
first four types fall under the category of grammatical cohesion. Lexical cohesion on the
other hand refers to relations between any lexical item and some previously occurring
lexical item in the text, quite independently of the grammatical category of the items in
question. The five types of cohesion are explained below:
1.3.2.1. Referential Cohesion
Halliday (1994) states "a participant or circumstantial element introduced at one place in
the text can be taken as a reference point for something that follows. In the simplest case
this means that the same thing comes again But it may also mean that it serves as a basis
for comparison" (Halliday, 1994: 309)
Thompson gives a very explicit explanation of reference, he wrote: "reference is the set of
grammatical resources which allow the speaker to indicate whether something is repeated
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from somewhere else in the text or whether it is has not yet appeared in the text"
(Thompson, 1996: 148).
There are two main types of reference, they are anaphoric reference and cataphoric
reference. While cataphoric reference points the reader or listener forward, i.e. it draws us
further into the text in order to identify the elements to which the reference items refer,

1.3.2.5. Lexical cohesion
The last type of cohesion according to Halliday and Hasan’s (1976) classification is lexical
cohesion. Despite reference, substitution, and ellipsis which are associated with syntactic
elements, lexical cohesion has nothing to do with syntactic relations. Therefore it is a open-
ended and the most difficult cohesive type to define which is vocabulary-driven and based
on lexical relations. Halliday and Hasan divided lexical into two main catergories:
reiteration and collocation.
1.3.2.5.1. Reiteration
Reiteration is a phenomenon when one lexical item refers back to another, to which it is
related by having a common referent. Reiteration is a form of lexical cohesion which
comprises of the repetition of a lexical item to refer back to a lexical item and number of
things in between as the use of synonym, near-synonym, or superordinate. (Halliday &
Hasan, 1976: 278)
From the above notion we can infer that reiteration consists of repetition, synonym,
antonym, superordinate. The following examples will illustrate each type of reiteration.
- Repetition (of a phrase or word)
In most financial centres, there are also branches of lots of foreign banks, largely
doing Eurocurrency business. A Eurocurrency is any currency held outside its
country of origin. The first significant Eurocurrency market was for US dollars in
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Europe, but the name is now used for foreign currencies held anywhere in the
world (e.g. yen in the US, euros in Japan).
(EBS - Stocks and shares, p.91)
- Synonymy (words which have similar meanings, e.g. well-known, famous)
This act was repealed in 1999. The Japanese equivalent was abolished the previous
year, and the banking industry in Britain was also deregulated in the 1990s
(EBS - Banking, p.85)
- Antonym (the relation of opposite meaning e.g. high, low, day, night)
To reduce the money supply, they sell these bills to commercial banks, and

sub-classified into four subtypes: repetition, synonym, antonym, superordinate.
In this chapter, the lexical cohesive devices used in six different texts will be analyzed. The
six texts studied in this thesis are extracted from six units of the course book EBS which
are included in the ESP course level 2, the course designed for third year students at TUU.
This course book was chosen as the main material for teaching and learning ESP of almost
all the faculties at TUU. Most of the units in the course book contain three components:
1. An informative reading text giving an overview of a particular topic
2. Either listening exercises or shorter authentic reading passage.
3. An additional case study, role play, discussion activity or writing exercise.
The six sample texts are taken from the first part of each unit. They aim at
introducing key business and economic concepts, including a large amount of relevant
economic terms. They are chosen to be examined because of having high frequent
occurrence of lexical cohesive ties. The following table presents the origin of each sample
text: - 17 -

Text
Unit
Sample text 1: Types of bank
Unit 14: Banking
Sample text 2: Companies
Unit 15: Stock and shares
Sample text 3: Bonds
Unit 16: Bonds
Sample text 4: Market leaders, challengers
and followers
Unit 18: Market structure and competition
Sample text 5: Taxation (and how to avoid

112
Antonymy
50
Superordinate
90
Collocation
113
Total
705
Table 2: The frequency of presence of lexical cohesive devices in sample texts
The overview of lexical cohesive devices in the six BE texts reveals that: there is a
preference of using repetition, synonymy and collocation in written discourses of the
textbook and a lower frequency of other types. There are totally 705 lexical items
identified in BE reading texts of which 340 are repetitions, account for 48.2%. Collocation
and synonymy have a similar count of 113 and 112, equivalent to 16.0% and 15.9%. Next
is superordinate device with the occurrence of 90 times, accounts for 12.8% and the lowest
frequency is antonymy device with 50 items counted equal to 7.1%. The following figure
shows the difference in the contribution of lexical cohesive ties in the sample texts

Figure 1: Lexical cohesive devices in BE texts - Frequency of occurrence
48.20%
15.90%
7.10%
12.80%

The British and American central banks also sell and buy short-term (three month)
Treasury Bills as a way of regulating the money supply. To reduce the money
supply, they sell these bills to commercial banks, and withdraw the cash received
from circulation; to increase the money supply the buy them back, paying with
newly created money which is put into circulation in this way.
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In the above example, the verbs sell and buy in the second example are repeated exactly
with their presupposed items, the noun phrase money supply is repeated twice without any
change in grammatical function, they are therefore considered simple repetition.
One way of making a discourse coherent is repeating important words which are used more
than once in the same discourse. In all the sample texts investigated in this thesis, most of
the topic words occur repeatedly. For example, in text 3 "Bonds", the topic word bond is
repeated 10 times, the text 2 deals with the topic "Stocks and Shares" the word company is
used repeatedly 15 times whereas the word tax is repeated up to 19 times in the text
"Taxation (and how to avoid it!)". The followings are some typical examples taken from
sample BE texts:
Examples in text 6:
To reduce income tax liability some employers give highly-paid employees lots of
perks or benefits instead of taxable money, such as company cars, free health
insurance, and subsidized lunches. Legal ways of avoiding tax, such as these, are
known as loopholes in tax laws. Life insurance policies, pension plans and other
investments by which individuals can postpone the payment of tax, are known as
tax shelters. Donations to charities that can be subtracted from the income on
which tax is calculated are described as tax-deductible.
Text 6 is about taxation and ways to avoid it, the topic word tax is found in almost every
sentence. This helps create a high cohesiveness of the text. Text 4 deals with the topic
market structure, the key word market is used repeatedly:
Examples in text 4:
One way to do this is to try to find ways to increase the size of the entire market.