MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING
HANOI OPEN UNIVERSITY TA MINH HANG AN ANALYSIS OF COHESIVE DEVICES USED IN “PRIDE
AND PREJUDICE” BY JANE AUSTEN IN COMPARISON
WITH ITS VIETNAMESE TRANSLATION

(PHÂN TÍCH CÁC PHƯƠNG TIỆN LIÊN KẾT SỬ DỤNG TRONG
TÁC PHẨM “KIÊU HÃNH VÀ ĐỊNH KIẾN” CỦA JANE AUSTEN SO
SÁNH VỚI BẢN DỊCH SANG TIẾNG VIỆT) M.A.THESIS Hanoi-2013

MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING
HANOI OPEN UNIVERSITY

TA MINH HANG
Tạ Minh Hằng Prof. Dr. Hoàng Văn Vân

ii
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

In completion of this study, I have received a great deal of helpful
assistance from many people.
First of all, I would like to express my sincere thanks to my supervisor,
Prof. Dr. Hoang Van Van. With his profound knowledge and experience in
teaching as well as great enthusiasm, he has given me a lot of advice,
comments and encouragement so that I could finish my research with the best
result.
I would also like to show my gratitude to all the professors of the Faculty
of Graduate Studies, Hanoi Open University for their in valuable lectures.
Beside, I really wish to thank the authors of the books and articles I used as
reference materials for this thesis.
My deepest thanks go to my beloved family and my friends who always
stand by my side, and have helped and encouraged me during my preparation
till the completion of the study. Hanoi, December 2013

Ta Minh Hang

iv
1.3.3. The Basis of Translation 21
1.3.4. Source Language and Target Language 22
1.3.5. Translation of fiction 22
1.4. An overview on “Pride and Prejudice” by Jane Austen 23
1.4.1. Introduction to “Pride and Prejudice” by Jane Austen and the translated
version 23
1.4.1.1. The source language version 23
1.4.1.2. The translated version 25
1.4.2. A brief summary of “Pride and Prejudice” 25
1.4.3. The selection of certain chapter 26
CHAPTER 2: AN ANALYSIS OF COHESIVE DEVICES USED IN
“PRIDE AND PREJUDICE” BY JANE AUSTEN IN COMPARISON
WITH ITS VIETNAMESE TRANSLATION 27
2.1. Grammatical cohesion 27
2.1.1. References 27
2.1.1.1 Exophoric 27
2.1.1.2. Endophoric Reference 28
2.1.1.3. Statistical Analysis of Reference Markers 30
2.1.2. Substitution 34
2.1.3. Ellipsis 36
2.1.4. Conjunction 38
2.2. Lexical cohesive devices 41
2.2.1. Reiteration 42
2.2.2. Collocation 47
2.3. Vietnamese Solutions to the English Cohesive Devices 49
2.3.1. Treatment of Referential cohesion 51
2.3.2. Treatment of Substitution 56

Table 2.4: Substitution in “Pride and Prejudice” 35
Table 2.5: Ellipsis in “Pride and Prejudice” 37
Table 2.6: Conjunctive Relations in “Pride and Prejudice” 39
Table 2.7. Occurrence and frequency of Vietnamese solutions to the English
cohesive devices 50
1
PART I: INTRODUCTION
1. Rationale of the study
Cohesion is an important factor of discourse which has attracted a lot
of attention from linguists. The most significant research on cohesion is
“Cohesion in English” by Halliday and Hasan (1976). Cohesion is considered
one of the most challenging aspects of translation, as any language has its
own unique manners in which it employs cohesive devices in the creation of a
cohesive text. Each language has its own patterns to convey the
interrelationships of persons and events; there is not any language that these
patterns may be ignored, if the translation is to be understood by its readers
(Callow, 1974). The topic of cohesion has always appeared as the most useful
constituent of discourse analysis that is applied to translation. English and
Vietnamese have different grammatical and lexical structures, and it is only
natural that they pose great difficulties and challenges for a translator to deal
with, especially in the field of literature.

text in English and its translation into Vietnamese, this study aims to provide
a close analysis of a particular cohesive devices employed in English and their
equivalences in the Vietnamese translation. It uses both quantitative and
qualitative methods. Then it will make a comparison between the use of
cohesive devices of the original text and those of the target text.
3. Research questions
This research aims at addressing the following questions:
1) “What cohesive devices are used in Pride and Prejudice?” and what
extent do cohesive devices contribute to the success of literary work?
2) “What are the techniques of translating cohesive devices?” 3
The answer to these questions will help students of English as a foreign
language, especially those who wish to specialize in translation realize
those differences and decide on the most appropriate method.
The study is also expected to be a good reference of criteria to any
Vietnamese readers who love “Pride and Prejudice” by Jane Austen in
particular and literary works in English in general for a good translation.
4. Scope of the study
As Discourse Analysis has a very broad scope which has a very close
relationship with many other aspects of language study, it is impossible for
the author to refer to all of its characteristics. Thus, within this study, the
author just mentions some background knowledge about Discourse Analysis
as well as coherence and cohesion.
In addition, there are a number of factors that make “Pride and
Prejudice” a successful work, hence, this study only focus on the cohesive
devices employed in Jane Austen‟s book. The data here analyses is only taken
from some selected chapters from “Pride and Prejudice” by Jane Austen and
their equivalents in the translated version in Vietnamese.

employed in the novel.
Chapter 3 describes, analyzes and discusses the translation of the text
from English into Vietnamese in matter of cohesive devices.
* Conclusion: summaries the main contents studied in thesis and makes some
suggestions for further research.
5
PART II: DEVELOPMENT
CHAPTER 1: THEORETICAL BACKGROUND
This chapter attempts to provide the theoretical framework of
investigation such as concepts of discourse, cohesion and coherence, cohesive
devices, context in discourse analysis which are relevant to the purpose of this
study, as well as the definition and properties of Discourse Analysis in
general and Cohesive devices in particular.
1.1 Literature Review
The theoretical knowledge of the study is based on the viewpoint from
different prospects of great linguists as well as the ideas extracted from the
researches previously done. In this chapter, the author would like to review
some researches related to the study of previous authors as references for
carrying out the study them the author compare and analyze the data of
grammatical cohesion devices of English and Vietnamese version‟s novel
“Pride and Prejudice”. In reality, researches done on cohesion, particular
cohesive devices of a certain genre of discourse are numerous; therefore, it is
hard to cover all. For this reason, only some researches implemented in
Vietnam within restricted area of Vietnam National University are reviewed
in a very small scale.
The first research in an M.A thesis by Phuong To Tam (2003) entitled
“An analysis of coherence and cohesion and a contrastive analysis of lexical

percentage, 24.9% compared with 11%. Synonyms and Near-synonyms
account for nearly the same portion, which is respectively 10.4% and 11.3%.
However, unlike in sales letters, near-synonyms in application letters seem to
play a more important part, with 11.3% compared with 4.9%. The data
analysis helps the author come to final conclusion that repetition is by far the 7
most frequently used lexical cohesive devices in the genre of a application
letter.
The next research is an M.A thesis by Tran Thi Hoa Mai (2010) entitled
“An analysis of grammatical cohesion used in “The call of the Wild” by Jack
London”. The data for this thesis from the seven chapters of the book with
detailed analysis to clarify the application of such grammatical cohesive
devices employed in that book. In the research, it can be concluded that the
occurrences of conjunctions in discourse, specifically in “The Call of the
Wild” is so often that without them, a text would be a collection of jumbled
sentences which are not related to each other. One thing should be noted in
here is the absolute omission of Dismissal in Adversative and Conditional and
Respective in Causal.
The last research review is Cao Thi Huyen Nga (2012) entitled “An
analysis of cohesive devices in the ESP textbook on accounting at the
University of Labor and Social Affairs”. This study is mainly aimed at
analyzing cohesive devices in the reading texts on Accounting at ULSA,
finding out teachers‟ attitudes towards cohesion teaching. Four reading texts
were chosen as core materials for the analysis of the cohesive devices. Five
teachers from English Department were asked to take part in the interview in
order to give ideas about their attitudes towards teaching cohesion. The
analysis reveals that lexical cohesive devices are used more often in the
textbooks than grammatical cohesive devices. The data from interview

dialog, articles, books, and so on. Discourse analysis is often described as
“language-in-use” by means; the way of understanding social interactions,
and how written and spoken texts are used in a specific contexts to make
meanings. “It tends to focus specifically on aspects of what is unsaid or
unwritten (yet communicated) within the discourse being analyzed” 9
(Yule, 1978). So discourse analysis is all what people “perceive” or “think”
about any given topic.
b, Discourse and Text
It is still in vagueness to define whether or not discourse and text are
of two separate entities and some linguists are trying to set them apart.
According to Widdowson (1979) text is sentences in combination whereas
discourse is the use of sentence for communication.
For some linguists, discourse is different from text. According to
Cook (1989) text is “a stretch of language interpreted formally, without
context”. However, Brown and Yule (1983) argue that text is the
representation of discourse and the verbal record of a communicative act.
Actually, it is not easy to make a clear-cut distinction between “text”
and “discourse”. The concepts of discourse and text defined by Halliday
(1985) maybe the most comprehensive. He states that “discourse” itself is a
process and the term “text” is usually taken as referring to the product. And
obviously, cohesion and coherence are typical of text as a language unit.
1.2.2. Context in discourse analysis
a, The notion of context
As premise, we should take a short excursion into the history of the
notion of context. Halliday and Hasan (1976) draw their concept of context
from Bronislaw Malinowski's principle of describing the environment and
culture along with the text to analyze. Malinowski, himself being an

Besides the language and context of situation we need to pay attention to
the context of culture. As stated by Malinowski (1923) “if you are not a
member of the culture, you cannot understand what is meant”. To recognize
the text as meaningful, the readers or hearers need to refer the text to a 11
cultural context. It is important to know the culture of the given language in
interpreting and understanding the given messages.
1.2.3. Cohesion
1.2.3.1. The concept of cohesion
The concept of cohesion is closely connected with text. It is defined as the
grammatical and lexical relationship between different elements of a text.
According to Yule (1996), a text is usually considered to have a certain
structure which depends on factors quite different from those required in the
structure of single sentence. Some among those factors are described in term
of cohesion, or the ties and connection which exist within a text.
Halliday and Hasan (1976) also define cohesion in a similar way: “The
concept of cohesion is a semantic one; it refers to relations of meaning that
exist within a text, and that defines it as a text”. They also point out that
cohesion often occurs when the interpretation of some elements in the
discourse is dependent on that of another.
1.2.3.2. Cohesion vs. Coherence
The concept of cohesion refers to relations of meaning that exist within
the text, and that defines it as a text. Cohesion occurs where the interpretation
of some element in the discourse dependent on that of another.
Cohesion is the network of lexical, grammatical, and other relations
which link various parts of a text. These relations or ties organize and, to
some extent, create a text, for instance, by requiring the reader to interpret
words and expressions by reference to other words and expressions in the

13
GRAMMATICAL COHESION
LEXICAL COHESION
Reference
 Exphoric Reference
 Endophoric Reference
 Personal
 Demostrative
 Comparative
Substitution
 Nominal Substitution
 Verbal Substitution
 Clausal Substitution
Ellipsis
 Nominal Ellipsis
 Verbal Ellipsis
 Clausal Ellipsis
Conjunction
 Additive
 Adversative
 Causal
 Temporal
 Others
Reiteration
 Same word/Repetition
 Synonymy/ Near-synonym
 Superordinate
 General words
Collocation
 Noun + Noun


[to preceding text] [to following text]
anaphora cataphora

Figure 1.2: Types of reference
(Source: Haliday and Hasan, 1976)
Exophoric reference looks outside the text to the situation in which the text
occurs for the item which is being refer to (Paltridge and Burton, 2000).
Ex: We are at the supermarket and we‟ll be here for about another hour. 15
In this example, “The” and “here” are only instances of exphoric
reference if the name of the restaurant has not already been referred to earlier
in the text (Paltridge and Burton, 2000).
Endophoric reference is textual reference referring to an item which is
identified in the text.
Ex: "If a man has talent and can't use it, he's failed."
"If a man has talent and can't use it, he's failed."
(Tom Wolfe)
In this example, “he” a man; “it” talent. A reference item may be either
exophoric or endophoric. If it is endophoric, it may be anaphoric or
cataphoric.
Anaphoric reference signifies a word or phrase that refers to another or
phrase used earlier in a text (Paltridge and Burton, 2000).
Ex: "No woman can call herself free until she can choose consciously
whether she will or will not be a mother."
(Margaret Sanger)
In this example, “herself” & “she”woman.
Cataphoric reference describes the use of a word or phrase that refers to

they them
it
one
mine
yours
ours
his
hers
theirs
[its]
my
your
our
his
her
their
its
one‟s
(Source: Haliday and Hasan, 1976)
Demonstrative references are references by means of location, on a scale of
proximity, through determiners and adverbs. The following table shows the
system of demonstrative reference:
Table 1. 4: Demonstrative reference
Semantic catergory
Selective
Non-selective
Grammatical function
Modifier/Head
Adjunct
Modifier

Adjective
Adverb

same identical
equal
similar additional

other different else
identically
similarly likewise
so such
differently
otherwise

better, more etc
[comparative
adjectives and
quantifiers]
so more less
equally

(Source: Haliday and Hasan, 1976)
b, Substitution
Substitution is when a substitution form replace a noun (phrase), verb
(phrase) or a clause.
Three types of substitution are nominal substitution, verbal substitution
and clausal substitution. Haliday and Hasan (1976) give out a list of the items
that occur as substitutes:
Nominal: one, ones; same
Verbal: do