A Discourse Analysis of Lexical Cohesion in Selected Childrens Short Stories
بسمة خالد انغيش العميشي, فاطمة خليل غفوري الكناني
جامعة القادسية · العراق
Native speakers of English can easily demonstrate intuitive recognition of the differences between what is text and what is not. For them, a text is not just a jumble of random words, but an organised whole whose parts are interrelated. Accordingly, in 1976 Halliday and Hasan stressedthe presence of an important unit that contributes toachieving such relation(relations among parts of text)and this unitis called cohesion. The analysis of cohesive devices of any text demands paying attention to the fact that cohesion encompasses two kinds of devices: grammatical and lexical cohesion. Lexical cohesion is the chief principle of the present study.It is also divided into two devicesthat are reiteration and collocation; each with itstypes. In thisstudy, children's short storiesare analysed depending on Halliday and Hasan’s model to discover the way lexical cohesion is used. Thus, the study aims at: 1) investigating lexical cohesion devices in the selected texts based on Halliday and Hasan's model (1976) 2) and finding out how lexical cohesion is employed in children's short stories.In order to achieve these aims, the study has the following hypotheses:1.The use of lexical cohesive devicesmay be influenced by the styleof the two selected writers.2.The disparity in using lexical cohesion influences the short stories in terms of clarity and theme.3.Collocation is used more frequently than reiteration.The followingsare the conclusionsof the study that have been arrivedat: 1.The use of lexical cohesive devices is influenced by the writer him/herself. Writer's style can determine the text.2.Different use of lexical cohesive devices can have an impact on the clarity of the selected short stories.3.Basically, collocation is provento be the most frequent device than reiterationinthe selected short stories.These conclusions are presented through proving the invalidity and validity of the hypotheses that are given by the study.