Types of Lexical Cohesion in Expository Writing: Implications for Developing the

Vocabulary of Academic Discourse

Sandra Stotsky

College Composition and Communication, Vol. 34, No. 4, Coherence and Cohesion: What Are
They and How Are They Achieved?. (Dec., 1983), pp. 430-446.

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Types of Lexical Cohesion in
Expository Writing: Implications for
Developing the Vocabulary of
Academic Discourse1
Sandra Stotsky

Introduction

T h e critical importance of a formal vocabulary for composing o r com-

prehending academic discourse has received long overdue attention in the
work of Mina S h a ~ g h n e s s yAt . ~ the same time, Michael Halliday and Ruqaiya
Hasan have examined the role of vocabulary in connected discourse from a
different p e r ~ p e c t i v e .They
~ have proposed a new way to analyze how the
speakerlwriter's use of lexical resources may affect the listenerlreader's sense
and comprehension of connected discouse. Their work describes the various
types of semantic relationships created by a speakerlwriter's choice of vocab-
ulary and grammatical structures to produce a sense of text. By text, Halliday
and Hasan mean a "basic unit of meaning in language" (p. 2 5 ) , i.e., an authen-
tic, complete, contextually relevant, and interpretable instance of discourse.
According to their theory, these text-forming relationships occur when the
understanding of one linguistic element in a text is to some extent dependent
on the understanding of another element in the text. This network of seman-
tic relationships links together sentences or paragraphs, units of discourse
that are structurally independent of each other. These relationships create
the cohesive quality of connected discourse and help to create its texture-a
term Halliday and Hasan use to refer to the qualities of a text that make it
seem to cohere. Halliday and Hasan use the term Lexical Cohesion to refer
to the semantic relationships created by specific lexical items.
Halliday and Hasan have offered an approach to the analysis of text that
relates the writer's use of his or her resources to the responses of the reader.
Clearly, the skill with which a speakerlwriter crafts semantic relationships
through lexical choices helps determine the coherence and readability of a
text. Conversely, the degree to which a listenerlreader is able to recognize
and respond to these relationships influences the quality and rate of com-

Sandra Stotsky is an educational consultant specializing in the teaching of writing. For the past
four summers she has taught a graduate course on curriculum development and the pedagogy of
writing at the Harvard Summer School. She is a member of the National Humanities Faculty.
Her essay, "The Vocabulary of Essay Writing," appeared in the October, 1981, issue.

430 College Composition and Communication, Vol. 34, No. 4, December 1983
Lexical Cohesion in Expository Writing 43 1

prehension. However, the scheme proposed by Halliday and Hasan for

analyzing lexical cohesion is derived primarily from an examination of sam-
ples of conversational and literary discourse, not samples of expository essay
writing. In my recent research, I have suggested the differences between the
vocabulary of essay writing and that of conversation or l i t e r a t ~ r e .It~ would
seem, therefore, that a scheme based on an analysis of samples of expository
writing might be more helpful to composition teachers. Such a framework
could guide us in the selection of ways to assess or strengthen the use of
appropriate lexical resources in the prose of developing writers.
Accordingly, my purpose in this paper is to offer a framework for analyz-
ing lexical cohesion in academic discourse based on the one Halliday and
Hasan developed from their analysis of conversational and literary discourse.
I will first apply their conceptual scheme to several exemplary essay passages
to show how and why it should be expanded and modified. I will then pro-
pose a reorganization of their scheme to provide a more comprehensive and
useful framework for categorizing the lexical resources used by able writers
of expository prose. The essay will conclude by discussing the implications of
this new framework for teaching expository readinglwriting and for research.

Types of Lexical Cohesion i n Expository Essay Writing

The essay passages I will use for my analysis come from rhe fourth edition of
Modern Rhetoric by Cleanth Brooks and Robert Penn Warren and were
selected by them to illustrate different forms of e x p ~ s i t i o n Since
.~ their text
is one of the oldest and most widely used texts in composition teaching, the
examples chosen by Brooks and Warren may be regarded as representative
samples of exposition. The following passages will be used for my analysis:
Power is, roughly speaking, the ability to move something from here to
there despite apparent obstacles. It implies the control of all aspects of a
situation and it is, therefore, different from mere influence, which can be
blunted by counterinfluence. This entity does not spring from theoretical
formulations o r intellectual analyses. Power rises, along with a tough kind
of wisdom, from the streets. Political power is born in and thrives in
confusion and inefficiency; effectiveness has never had a necessary con-
nection with efficiency. Powerful men understand the value of uncer-
tainty and a seeming lack of order-if not downright chaos-around them
all the time. O n e of the reasons political reformers in any organization
have so much difficulty is that they are perenially trying to make things
more efficient. Power in the primal sense is never found in orderliness o r
logic; too much well-defined delegation of authority may make demo-
cratic sense, but that is not what the truly powerful want o r allow.
-Eugene Kennedy, "Political Power and American Ambivalence,"
New York Times Magazine, 19 March 1978 (p. 84)

Fundamentally Grant was superior to Lee because in a modern total

war he had a modern mind, and Lee did not. Lee looked to the past in
 College Composition and Communication

war as the Confederacy did in spirit. The staffs of the two men illustrate
their outlooks. . . . Grant's staff was an organization of experts in the var-
ious phases of strategic planning. The modernity of Grant's mind was
most apparent in his grasp of the concept that war was becoming total and
that the destruction of the enemy's economic resources was as effective
and legitimate a form of warfare as the destruction of his armies. What
was realism to Grant was barbarism to Lee. Lee thought of war in the old
way as a conflict between armies and refused to view it for what it had
become-a struggle between societies. T o him, economic war was need-
less cruelty to civilians. Lee was the last of the great old-fashioned gener-
als; Grant, the first of the great moderns.
-T. Harry Williams, Lincoln and His Generals (pp. 5 5 - 5 6 )

Marx's interpretation of the past is explicit and realistic; his forecast of

the future seems to me vague and idealistic. I have called it utopian, but
you object to that word. I do not insist on it. I will even surrender the
word "idealistic." But the point is this. Marx finds that in the past the
effective force that has determined social change is the economic class
conflict. H e points out that this economic class conflict is working to
undermine our capitalistic society. Very well. If then I project this expla-
nation of social changes into the future, what does it tell me? It seems to
tell m e that there will be in the future what there has been in the past-
an endless economic class conflict, an endless replacement of one domi-
nant class by another, an endless transformation of institutions and ideas
in accordance with the changes effected by the class conflict.
-Carl Becker, "The Marxian Philosophy of History,"
Everyman His Own Historian: Essays on History and Politics (p. 248)

Halliday and Hasan propose two major categories for examples of lexical
cohesion: Reiteration and Collocation. In both categories, interpretation of
one lexical element in a text is facilitated by the presence of another. They
describe reiteration as a phenomenon in which one lexical item refers back
to another to which it is related by having a common referent, i.e., a common
source for interpreting the two items (p. 278). Four types of reiterated items
are suggested: a reiterated item may be (1) the same word, or a repetition, (2)
a synonym or near-synonym, (3) a superordinate word, or (4) a general word.
Examples of each type may be found in the three selected passages.
There are many examples of repetition and synonymy or near-synonymy in
all three selections. An example of a superordinate word may be found in the
second passage where the meaning of the word societies includes both, civilians
and armies and serves to link these latter two concepts together as subordi-
nate elements. An example of a general word may be found in the first pas-
sage where the meaning of This entity can be determined only by reference
to power.
Collocational cohesion, on the other hand, refers primarily to the sense
of connected discourse created by the close co-occurrence of relatively low
frequency words that tend to appear in similar contexts, e.g., the words war,
total, modern, destruction, enemy, armies, conflict, civilians, generals in the second
passage, and the words social, conflict, economic, class, capitalistic in the third
Lexical Cohesion in Expository Writing 433

selection. The co-occurrence of highly frequent words in either written or

oral language has no cohesive power; highly frequent words (e.g., do, make,
go) enter into association with all kinds of words in all contexts. As Halliday
and Hasan indicate, words with relatively low frequency may contribute to
textual cohesion because they are apt to associate with a limited number of
words in a limited number of contexts.
In the category of collocational cohesion, Halliday and Hasan also place a
type of cohesion in which words are related through various kinds of opposi-
tion. All three selections offer numerous examples of contrast or opposition,
e.g., inefficiencylefficiency in the first passage. As they are in the second pas-
sage, barbarismirealism also create a contrast. Other types of relationships
suggested by Halliday and Hasan for collocational cohesion include words
from ordered sets, such as days of the week or months of the year, and words
from unordered sets, such as the names of colors. Examples of these types do
not appear in these passages.
Halliday and Hasan suggest that the cohesive power of the co-occurrence
of two or more words is affected by three factors: (1) the frequency of their
occurrence in the language as individual words, (2) the frequency of their
co-occurrence in texts in general, and (3) their physical proximity in the text.

Critique of Halliday and Hasan's Scheme

There appear to be at least two major flaws in Halliday and Hasan's scheme.
The first one is its lack of comprehensiveness in accounting for cohesion in
expository essay writing. If we examine more closely the ways in which the
authors of the above passages have achieved lexical cohesion, not all of them
seem to be accounted for clearly and completely in the types of cohesion
defined by Halliday and Hasan. T o begin with, their scheme fails to note the
text-forming relationships created by the use of derivatives o r derivational
elements. One issue here may be the question of what constitutes a word.
Halliday and Hasan suggest that a lexical item is not bound to a particular
grammatical category, or to a particular morphological form (p. 291). At the
same time that they admit there are "no perfectly clear criteria for deciding
just how far this principle can be extended" (p. 291), they suggest that noan,
nominal, nominalize, and nominalization are "presumably" all one lexical item.
But if we use Halliday and Hasan's suggested criteria for identifying a lexical
item and d o not distinguish derivatives from base words, we face certain
difficulties when we try to analyze lexical cohesion.
Consider pairs of words such as powerlpowerful and efficiencylefficient in the
first passage, modernlmodernity and warlwarfare in the second passage, and
effectedleffective in the third passage. Are they instances of repetition? Even
though the use of the same base word seems to maintain semantic continuity,
the words in each pair do not have identical meanings, nor do they necessar-
ily function in the same syntactic environment. Consider also such pairs as
414 College Composition and Commanication

inflaencelcoanterinflaence and inefficiencylefficiency. Are they examples of

repetition--or of opposition? O r are they perhaps examples of both? On the
other hand, consider such pairs as barbarismlrealism and realisticlidealistic.
Even though the base elements in each pair establish a contrast, some con-
tinuity in meaning is maintained for the items in each pair through the use of
the same meaning-bearing suffix. Consider also such expressions as
"Forewarned is forearmed" and "To prejudge is to misjudge." Repetition of
the derivational element in the first phrase and of the base word in the sec-
ond clearly creates cohesion, yet it would be inaccurate to consider either
pair an example of repetition. If we fail to differentiate derivatives from base
words, then we have no way to note the cohesive relations between two
derivatives (e.g., misjudgelprejudge) or between two words with similar deriva-
tional elements (e.g., forewarnedlforearmed). Further, if we consider any de-
rivative as simply a repetition of its base word, then we will not provide an
accurate description of the semantic relationship between the two words, and
we may fail to gain potentially important information about the textural pat-
terns in a particular text. Perhaps, then, the use of derivatives or derivational
elements should be considered as a distinct and separate way to create text-
forming relationships.
There are also stylistic reasons for considering the use of derivatives as
another way of achieving lexical cohesion. Derivatives allow the writer of
exposition a considerable degree of stylistic flexibility while preserving basic
meaning, e.g., in the nominalization or verbalization of an adjective over a
series of sentences, as in the nominalization of "modern" to "modernity" in
the second selection. Further, derivational elements appear to be useful in
creating an additional cohesive tie for a pair of related lexical items, such as
in realisticlidealistic. Multiple cohesive ties seem to strengthen the cohesive
quality of a text and to compensate for the increasing density of ideas as
writers consolidate phrases into words to achieve a more succinct prose style.
Moreover, I have suggested in previous research that the use of derivatives is
a dominating feature of expository writing and serves two other important
stylistic purposes-preciseness in meaning and conciseness in expression.
Thus, derivation might profitably be distinguished from repetition,
synonymy, or contrast when stylistic differences in ways of achieving lexical
cohesion are examined across kinds of discourse. This distinction may be just
as informative in assessing the development of an expository writing style at
the secondary or post-secondary level; an increase in the use of morphologi-
cally complex words, rather than repetition of a simple word or the use of a
cumbersome paraphrase, may be an important index of growth.
Secondly, Halliday and Hasan fail to discuss how a cohesive tie created by
a subordinate item that follows a superordinate word (e.g., civilians in the
second essay selection) would be classified. They discuss the cohesive tie
created only when the superordinate word occurs after the subordinate item
whose meaning it includes (p. 280). It is not clear what useful information
Lexical Cohesion in Expository Writing 435

about text construction is gained by classifying the use of a superordinate

word following a subordinate item as one type of cohesion but the converse
as another type, if it is even considered as a tie at all. In essay writing, it is
probably at least as likely, if not more so, for a general concept to precede
the discussion of examples or aspects of the concept as the converse. (The
Grade 7 passage discussed later in this essay provides two illustrations of this
phenomenon.)
The other, more serious flaw in Halliday and Hasan's scheme is the lack of
clear and consistent principles underlying the formulation of their two major
categories and the assignment of types of lexical cohesion to each category.
First, Halliday and Hasan offer no consistent reason for grouping the dif-
ferent types of reiterated items together in one category. Although they state
initially that reiterated items are related through a common referent, they
later suggest that it is not necessary for two lexical occurrences to have the
same referent in order for them to be cohesive (p. 282). Further, they claim
that a lexical item may cohere with a preceding occurrence of the same item
"whether or not there is any referential relationship between them" (p. 283).
In sum, the "second occurrence may be, as far as reference is concerned, (a)
identical, (b) inclusive, (c) exclusive or (d) simply unrelated" (p. 283). The
following examples of each are offered on p. 283:
There's a boy climbing that tree.
(identical) a. The boy's going to fall if he doesn't take care.
(inclusive) b. Those boys are always getting into mischief.
(exclusive) c. And there's another boy standing underneath.
(unrelated) c. Most boys love climbing trees.

Halliday and Hasan suggest that a particular intonation pattern for (d) could
make it clear that Most boys has no referential relation to the boy climbing
trees.
If reiterated items are not necessarily grouped around a common referent,
then it is not clear what principle groups the different types of reiterated
items together in one category. It therefore is not clear from Halliday and
Hasan's text what theoretical purpose is then served by the distinction they
make between their two major categories of reiteration and collocation. This
question leads us to an examination of the types of relationships they have
included in the category of collocational cohesion. Here, again, we seem to
lack a clear principle underlying its organization.
The term collocational cohesion suggests the kind of ties created by words
that are related to each other only insofar as they tend to appear together in
similar contexts; it does not seem to imply a relationship independent of
frequent co-occurrence. Moreover, words that contribute to collocational
cohesion create varying degrees of cohesiveness depending upon the fre-
quency of their co-occurrence in the language and proximity in a text. For
example, destraction and war appear to contribute to collocational cohesion in
436 College Composition and Commzlnication

the second passage. They have no recognizable relationship with each other;
yet because of the frequency of their co-occurrence in discussions about acts
of violence and their proximity in the text, they are cohesive.
On the other hand, words related through various forms of contrast, such
as moderniold-fashioned, or as members of a set, such as SatzlrdayiSzlnday, have
an unvarying, systematic semantic relationship with each other, whether or
not they co-occur frequently. One wonders whether words susceptible of
both a semantic and a collocational relationship should be classified like
words related only through collocation. Moverover, words related as
synonyms, such as idealistichtopian, are also susceptible of both kinds of rela-
tionships. It is not clear from Halliday and Hasan's explanation of colloca-
tional cohesion why antonymous relationships, for example, are collocational
whereas synonymous ones are not, particularly in cases where there is no
referential relation between the two synonyms. Expressions of similarities or
contrasts seem to be of a similar kind of intellectual operation and different
from the use of words that tend to appear together in similar contexts. Again,
it is not clear what useful information about text construction is gained by
mixing intellectually different operations in one category and separating simi-
lar ones into two categories if there is no linguistic principle necessarily
separating the two categories.
Variations and trends in word use in the prose of developing writers may
be overlooked or distorted if we do not account for elements that do con-
tribute to cohesion, if we do not distinguish derivatives or derivational ele-
ments from other lexical elements, and if we place words with clearly
definable semantic relationships in a category with words that simply tend to
co-occur. The following two essays provide examples of these difficulties.
The essays were written by two tenth-grade students in a small-town high
school as part of a holistic evaluation of writing; all Grade 10 students were
asked to take and defend a position on whether the granting of a high school
diploma should be contingent upon a student's tested competence in all the
basic skills. The first essay was one of the 8 highest-rated papers, the second,
one of the 11 lowest. Both papers have been edited for punctuation, capitali-
zation, a l ~ dspelling.

Competency testing before receiving a high school diploma is benefi-

cial to the student and everyone connected to the student. A competency
test will focus attention toward any student who has difficulty with one o r
more of the basic and valuable skills of reading, writing, and mathematics.
The students having difficulty can then receive additional aid and not miss
the chance to learn the basic skills. A high school diploma will benefit
students more greatly than it has in the past because it assures any em-
ployer that his worker has the basic skills for the job.

I think it's a waste of time and energy. It's not fair to us to have to take
it and not all the others who graduated ahead of us. It's not something
you can bring up now. It should have started in the beginning o r not at
all.
Lexical Cohesion in Expository Writing

All the students would be nervous as to whether they were graduating

or not. All because of a test. They would probably flunk being so nervous
knowing that they better pass to graduate.
I know I probably wouldn't pass unless we got to study ahead of time
for it. And I'm greatly opposed.

The first essay contains 93 words in 4 sentences; the second contains 97

words in 9 sentences6 O n the basis of Halliday and Hasan's scheme, the first
essay contains 9 repetitions and no examples of synonymous, superordinate,
or general words. I would suggest that the following words are collocational:
competency testing, high school diploma, student, difficulty, basic skills, reading,
writing, mathematics, aid, and employer, worker, skills, job. The second essay
contains 5 repetitions and no examples of synonymous, superordinate, or
general words. I cautiously suggest graduated, students, text, flunk, pass as
examples of collocational cohesion.
Halliday and Hasan's scheme for lexical cohesion appears to capture the
vast difference in quality between the two papers only in accounting for the
number of words that could be classified as contributing to repetition and
collocational cohesion. (Other differences do exist between those two papers
in, for example, the number of cohesive ties created by grammatical struc-
tures and the number of ties that are immediate, mediated, or remote.) Their
scheme provides no way for noting several aspects of lexical cohesion that
contribute to the greater quality of the first essay. First, we have no way of
noting that the word employer in sentence 4 is subordinate to the superordi-
nate phrase everyone connected to the student in sentence 1 , a cohesive tie that
serves to link all 4 sentences together. Second, by classifying the use of bene-
fit in senrence 4 as a repetition of beneficial in sentence 1 , we lose its signifi-
cance as an indication of lexical maturity and stylistic flexibility. Third, if the
contrast of employerlworker is counted together with other examples of collo-
cational cohesion, the writer's skill in using contrasts is overlooked-a lin-
guistic clue that Lee Odell, for example, considers useful in analyzing irn-
provements in student ~ r i t i n g Finally,
.~ the repetition of the derivational
element in employerlworker also remains unnoted.
What seems to be needed is an organization and categorization of types of
lexical cohesion that is more comprehensive and appropriate for analyzing
cohesion in expository essay writing than Halliday and Hasan's scheme. The
following section offers a reformulation of their theoretical framework to
address the inadequacies discussed above and suggests why this new
framework may be theoretically more justifiable than the original scheme.

Reorganization of the Theoretical Framework

The basic framework I am proposing consists of two major categories. The

first contains all types of lexical cohesion in which words have a systematic
semantic relationship with each other, whether or not they co-occur fre-
438 College Composition and Commzlnication

quently. Words that have such a relationship with each other have a stable
relationship in the language regardless of the frequency of their co-
occurrence. For example, words related through antonymy, such as effective1
ineffective, maintain this relationship in all contexts regardless of the fre-
quency of their co-occurrence. Words related to each other through repeti-
tion, synonymy, (e.g., lack of orderlchaos), subordination or superordination
(e.g., famitarelchair), membership in ordered o r unordered sets (e.g., June1
Jaly o r tablelchair), or derivation (e.g., intensivelintensify) also have recogniza-
ble semantic relationships with each other independent of frequency of con-
textual association. It would seem logical for these types of lexical cohesion
to be grouped together in a category I shall designate as that of semantically
related words.8
O n the other hand, words that tend to appear together in texts with similar
topics might continue to be designated as collocationally related words. Col-
locational words would have no systematic semantic relationship with each
other; they would be related to each other only through their association
with the topic of the text. For example, the following words in the second
selection strike me as topic-related: Grant, Lee, modern, total, war, Confeder-
acy, staffs, strategic planning, destruction, enemy's economic resources, armies,
cruelty, civilians, generals. After the first appearance of Grant, the first ap-
pearance of all the rest of these words could be classified as contributing to
collocational cohesion. These words seem to reflect the writer's fund of im-
portant concepts necessary for developing the topic. In a different context,
Stephen Witte and Lester Faigley have interpreted the presence of colloca-
tional ties in a similar way. After examining essays written by college
freshmen, they found that high-rated essays contained many more examples
of lexical collocation than low-rated ones; in their judgment, the number of
collocational ties in an essay indicated the amount of elaboration of the major
ideas introduced by the ~ r i t e r . ~
It seems difficult to establish any clear-cut criteria for distinguishing words
contributing to collocational cohesion. Halliday and Hasan suggest that, in
general, common sense and the knowledge we have of the language as speak-
ers are probably our best guides in judging what words contribute to cohe-
sion (p. 290). However, it may be our knowledge not as speakers of the
language but as readers of the language that helps us judge collocational
cohesion in academic discourse. Why might this be so?
I would suggest that words that contribute to cohesive ties in academic
discourse are usually the content words that have tended to be generated by
writers writing on similar topics for similar audiences. As can be seen in the
above essay passages, many of these words are often abstract and/or complex,
o r denote concepts not usually a part of the average reader's world experi-
ence (e.g., destraction, civilians, economic, capitalistic). If such words are more
characteristic of essay writing than of speech and literature, one might con-
clude that words contributing to cohesive ties in exposition tend to be liter-
Lexical Cohesion in Expository Writing 439

ate words, i.e., words that are more apt to be seen than heard, written than
spoken.
This line of reasoning would suggest that the cohesive potential of the
content words in academic discourse depends heavily upon the reader's pre-
vious experiences with them. This implication seems to hold particularly for
words contributing to collocational cohesion. In general, it is prior experi-
ence or familiarity with words that tend to be associated contextually with
each other that determines the strength of their relationship in the listener1
reader's mind. The strength of this relationship, in turn, influences both the
expectations of the listenerlreader and his comprehension of individual
words in groups of contextually associated words. For example, the reader
who has often seen such words as modern, total, war, staffs, strategic planning,
destruction, enemy's, resozlrces together may have a higher expectation for see-
ing strategic planning in the context of the other words and may be able to
interpret its meaning more readily than one who has not often seen these
words clustered together.
If many of the words contributing to collocational cohesion in academic
discourse are more apt to be found in formal essay writing than in speech or
literature, then the reader's prior experience in expository reading would
logically be a major source of their cohesive power. In fact, the three features
identified by Halliday and Hasan as contributing to collocational cohesion
would largely be inoperative for the inexperienced reader of exposition. For
the reader unfamiliar with the concepts and vocabulary of a particular written
text, few words could contribute to collocational cohesion regardless of their
proximity in the text. For example, someone unfamiliar with the topic and
the vocabulary of the first essay would be unlikely to sense the words I listed
as collocational.
The distinction I am making between semantically related words and collo-
cationally related words helps explain how the readerlresearcher determines
whether or not an element is cohesive. The first of these two categories
appears to depend more on the reader's knowledge of word meanings than
on his reading experience; the second category, more on his reading experi-
ence than on a knowledge of word meanings. Thus, the analysis of colloca-
tional cohesion in an experienced writer's text by an experienced reader may
be very different from the analysis of collocational cohesion in an experi-
enced writer's text by a relatively inexperienced reader of texts on that topic.
Perhaps the difference in the degree of familiarity with the topics of the
essays may account for the differences between the number of collocational
ties found by Witte and Faigley in their research and the number found by
Robert Hopkins in his analysis of cohesion in selected passages of popular
scientific discourse.1° Witte and Faigley found almost one collocational tie
per T-unit in their high-rated essays; in contrast, Hopkins classified only 21
of the 371 lexical ties he found in the 69 sentences he analyzed as colloca-
tional. This suggests that decisions about what words contribute to colloca-
440 College Composition and Communication

tional cohesion in an expository text may need to be made by readers experi-

enced with that topic.
In sum, a framework containing two major categories, semantically and
collocationally related words, might be a more appropriate, hence more use-
ful, framework for analyzing lexical cohesion in exposition. Table 1 presents
the framework I am proposing in contrast to the one outlined by Halliday
and Hasan, the latter illustrated with examples from the three essay passages
I selected. Within the first of my categories, lexical elements may be related
to each other on a systematic basis through (1) repetition, (2) synonymy, (3)
opposition or contrast, (4) inclusion as a coordinate, superordinate or subor-
dinate member in an ordered or unordered set, (5) or derivation or repeti-
tion of a derivational element. Table 1 also lists the four factors influencing
the cohesive potential of collocational words.
Witte and Faigley found that lexical rather than grammatical cohesion was
the predominant means of connecting sentences in both high and low quality
papers. Hopkins, too, found that lexical ties constituted the majority of cohe-
sive ties in his samples. If lexical rather than grammatical cohesion is the
most significant kind of cohesion in academic discourse, future research may
wish to consider using the framework suggested in this section. It may yield
clearer and more accurate information and insights about the use of lexical
resources by writers of exposition than the original scheme developed by
Halliday and Hasan. Moreover, since it contains all the types of cohesion
outlined in their original scheme, it should be just as useful for analyzing
other forms of discourse as well.

Pedagogical Implications

Academic discourse seems to be characterized by a large, diverse, and highly

literate vocabulary and by a richness of cohesive ties established through its
vocabulary. This paper outlines a proposed taxonomy of the lexical relation-
ships used by writers of expository essays to create cohesion. Most of the
ways to create these text-forming relationships, e.g., through repetition,
synonymy, contrast, or inclusion in a set, proceed from certain intellectual
operations, such as classifying, categorizing, noting likenesses or differences,
that in themselves do not need to be taught. The human mind by its very
nature develops and applies these operations to the natural world without
instruction. What writers d o need to develop is a huge repertory of words for
expressing these operations in order to present information and ideas effec-
tively in a variety of academic contexts. Moreover, as Witte and Faigley
suggest, "skill in invention, in discovering what to say about a particular
topic, may depend in ways yet unexplored on the prior development of
adequate working vocabularies" (p. 46).
How can this vast store of lexical knowledge for essay writing be devel-
oped? The major approaches to the development of the vocabulary of expo-
sition would appear to be (1) encouraging broad reading and frequent dis-
Lexical Cohesiow in Expository Writing

Table 1

Types and Categories of Lexical Cohesion in Cohesion In English

I. Reiteration: a type of cohesion in which one lexical element is related

through a common referent to a previous element as a:
1. Repetition (e.g., powerlpower)
2. Synonym or near-synonym (e.g., lack of orderlchaos)
3. Superordinate word (e.g., armieslsocieties)
4. General word (e.g., power1Thi.s entity)
11. Collocation: a type of cohesion in which one lexical element is related to
a previous one through frequent co-occurrence in similar
contexts by:
1. Association with a particular topic (e.g., Marx, social change, economic
class conflict, capitalistic society)
2. Opposition or constrast (e.g., inJlzlencelcounterinfZzlence)
3. Membership in ordered sets
4. Membership in unordered sets

Proposed Types and Categories of Lexical Cohesion in Expository Essay

Writing
I. Semantically related words: a type of cohesion in which one lexical ele-
ment is systematically related to a previous
one through:
1. Repetition
2. Synonymy or near-synonymy
3. Opposition or contrast
4. Inclusion as a coordinate, superordinate, or subordinate member in an
ordered or unordered set (general or specific terms)
5 . D erivation or repetition of a derivational element
11. Collocationally related words: a type of cohesion in which one lexical
element is related to another only
through frequent co-occurrence in similar
contexts"

"Factors affecting the cohesive power of co-occurring words in expository essay writing:
a. Frequency of occurrence in the language as individual words
b. Frequency of co-occurrence in texts in general
c. Physical proximity in the text
d. Extent of reader's reading experience with these co-occurring words
442 College Composition and Commzlniration

cussions of essays,'' (2) arranging discussions of an author's use of words,

supplemented occasionally by traditional kinds of exercises on categories of
word relationships, and (3) developing a sequence of writing activities, such
as those outlined by James Moffett in Active Voice, that stimulate the use of
this vocabulary for expressing logical operations in a variety of verbal con-
texts.12 As David Bartholomae points out, adult written discourse is a dis-
course "whose lexicon, grammar, and rhetoric are learned not through speak-
ing and listening but through reading and writing."13 How do instructional
programs in reading attempt to foster the development of this lexicon?
One primary method for helping students develop both an expository and
a literary vocabulary while reading instructional texts for Grades K-8 is de-
liberate repetition of new or difficult words in context. Texts are often writ-
ten or edited so that important and new words are repeated as many times as
possible within bounds of acceptable style. Note, for example, the repetition
of the word Everglades in the following selection from a Grade 7 reading
text:14
Tucked in the southern tip of Florida, Everglades is the third largest
national park. It is nearly twice the size of Rhode Island. Everglades, like
other national parks, is an area of wilderness set aside to remain in its
natural state. But in one way it is different. Other parks were established
to preserve natural features of the land. Everglades was established to
protect the many forms of life within its boundaries. It has no snow-
capped mountains, no geysers, no giant canyons, no glaciers. This is a
park of life: of birds, mammals, fish, reptiles, amphibians, and plants.
In this particular passage, the repetition of the word park as well not only
serves to maintain continuity in meaning but helps assure acquisition of the
meaning of the word Everglades. (It can be assumed that park is known to all
Grade 7 students.)
The other major technique for helping students understand unfamiliar vo-
cabulary is the use of contextual aids such as restatement, example, or defini-
tion. In the passage cited above, acquisition of the meanings of a group of
words that might typicaliy be associated with each other (area, wilderness,
preserve) is facilitated by the proximity of near-synonyms (size, natural, set
aside). The passage further illustrates how two sets of subordinate words
(mountains, geysers, canyons, glaciers, and birds, mammals, fib, reptiles, amphi-
bians, plants) are each bonded together through proximity and categorized in
advance for the reader by the use of contrasting superordinate phrases Cfea-
tares of the land, forms of life,.
However, authentic academic discourse has usually been created for ex-
perienced readers, not for inexperienced ones. Adult written texts, in con-
trast to spoken ones, tend to convey comparable units of information in
fewer words, but with a greater number of different and structually and
semantically more complex words. Moreover, many of these words tend to
occur only infrequently in speech. For these reasons, texts by mature writers
typically contain too much unknown semantic information in too dense a
Lexical Cohesion in Expository Writing 443

texture, at both the sentence and paragraph level, to be processed effectively

or with ease by the inexperienced reader. As a consequence, command of the
rich vocabulary of exposition is developed gradually in developmental read-
ing programs through the use of materials of increasing levels of textural
density. In order to reduce information load, writers of informational mate-
rial for the inexperienced reader tend to use a limited vocabulary. This re-
sults in a large amount of repetition and a thin texture. Note, for example,
the effects of a limited vocabulary in the following passage from a Grade 4
reading text:15
When you hear the buzz of a bee, d o you ever wonder how it makes
that sound? It does it by moving its wings back and forth. This moving
back and forth is called vibrating. The vibrating wings of the insect push
the air and make it move.
The beginning of all sound is something that vibrates, or moves back
and forth. When you pound a drum, or ring a bell, you are making things
move back and forth. Objects that move back and forth fast enough make
sound.
As the vocabulary load in informational material increases, so does the
richness of its texture; more and different kinds of cohesive ties can be
created by the use of a larger number of different words per sentence and
per paragraph. (Both the number of different kinds of lexical cohesive ties in
a text, as well as the total number of lexical cohesive ties, determine the
richness and density of its texture.) Every word used in a text supplies either
new or familiar information. The more that the new or additional information
can be related through cohesive ties to previous information, the less intel-
lectual energy the reader must expend to understand the writer. Moreover,
the use of derivational elements contributes to a growing density of cohesive
ties; these kinds of ties facilitate the reader's comprehension at the same time
they serve to condense more semantic information within a structural unit,
thereby increasing information load. However, the reader must clearly be
capable of recognizing and responding adequately to the lexical resources the
mature writer has used to create cohesive ties, if he or she is to benefit from
the richness of the texture the writer has created. Whether the lexical re-
sources used by the writer provide a particular reader with known or un-
known semantic information is a function of both the amount and quality of
the reader's previous reading experiences and his familiarity with the specific
topic. This means that the reader's capacity to respond to the writer's use of
lexical resources depends to a large extent upon how much he has read. Prior
reading experiences may be especially important for developing the reader's
capacity to respond adequately to the words that contribute to collocational
cohesion. And if prior reading experiences are a necessary condition for de-
veloping the reader's capacity to sense collocational cohesion, then frequent
experiences reading unrelated words that tend to co-occur frequently in writ-
ten language are a necessary condition for developing the writer's capacity to
create cohesion through collocation.
444 College Composition and Commzlnication

The need of the developing readerlwriter for frequent reading experiences

with materials of increasing levels of textural density implies that one of a
teacher's major responsibilities is to ensure students' continuous exposure to
progressively more mature expository prose.16 It seems reasonable to con-
clude that the progression may need to be almost the same for the adult
inexperienced reader as for the young inexperienced reader.
A major question that needs to be addressed is this: are students apt to
have an exposure to progressively richer presentations of information and
ideas in well-written expository essays? Unfortunately, it is not clear to what
degree students are systematically exposed to a developmental continuum in
the reading of expository essays similar to the continuum they are presently
exposed to in literature. Richard Venezky has recently estimated that 95% of
the selections in instructional series in reading for the elementary grades are
narratives, although more expository selections are used in the upper
elementary grades than in the primary grades.I7 Typically the reading/
language arts teacher in the elementary school is succeeded in the middle or
junior high school by an English teacher, and, as a result of professional
training, the analysis of texts that traditionally begins at the secondary level
focuses on literary, not expository, writing. Furthermore, the textbooks used
in the social sciences and sciences do not tend to provide models of short,
complete, well-written essays of quality comparable to that of the literary
selections students are apt to be reading in their English classes. Finally, the
informational selections used as exercises in reading comprehension
throughout the elementary and secondary grades are often the only other
form of academic prose students are regularly exposed to; these exercises
tend to be extremely short and intellectually unsatisfying pieces of writing,
unrelated in content to the rest of the curriculum.
Thus, it is quite possible that many students may not be experiencing de-
velopmentally the growing richness of natural cohesive ties in increasingly
longer, well-written, and rhetorically meaningful pieces of expository writing.
Perhaps an abundant supply of such selections does not yet exist. There may
well be a basic mismatch between our expectations for secondary and begin-
ning college students' ability to read and write exposition and the models of
writing actually provided to them for reading and discussion. This possibility
deserves extensive inquiry. Andrea Lunsford, reporting the results of a pilot
project in remedial English at a major university, points out the low reading
scores of the 92 writers in the project and notes that in a questionnaire about
their high school background only three reported formal work in reading.ls
Composition teachers at the college level may well need to pay far more
attention to the preceding twelve years of their students' curriculum in
readingllanguage arts1English than they have hitherto done.

Implications for Research

According to Philip Dale's summary of the research on semantic develop-

Lexical Cohesion in Expository Writing 445

ment, little is known about how language learners develop their knowledge
of relationships among word meanings.lg Most of the evidence from research
on early semantic development indicates that words with related meanings
(e.g., synonyms or antonyms) do not enter a young learner's vocabulary
simultaneously, and research on how older students develop an understand-
ing of relationships among word meanings, especially after the onset of for-
mal and sustained instruction in composition, is virtually non-existent. Most
studies of vocabulary use in written language have used statistically derived
measures, such as word frequency counts, type-token ratios, or indices of
vocabulary diversity, and have therefore provided no information on how
words are used to create meaning in connected discourse, only on what
words are used. If, as Lev Vygotsky suggests, writing is the "deliberate struc-
turing of the web of meaning,"20 then what better way to understand the
nature and course of students' semantic development at higher stages of intel-
lectual growth than through an examination of lexical cohesion in their writ-
ten discourse-especially discourse intended to present information and
explore ideas. Use of the categories and types of lexical cohesion proposed in
this paper in case studies of developing writers could provide needed infor-
mation on how meaning is communicated in written language and help us
discern developmental trends.
One might explore, for example, how much or how long beginning writers
of exposition rely on the use of repetition to create a sense of connected
discourse. Does a relative increase in the use of other types of systematic
semantic relationships reflect growing skill in weaving general statements and
specifics together? Does an increase in the number of words that contribute
to collocational cohesion reflect growth in ability at developing a topic? Does
an increasing use of all these other types of lexical cohesion occur simultane-
ously with improvement in the organization and development of an essay?
Are there any changes in the number of cohesive ties within sentences, as a
proportion of total lexical cohesive ties-both within and across sentence
boundaries-as students develop greater fluency and skill in expository writ-
ing? Does increasing skill in creating cohesive ties in essay writing coincide
with increasing skill in reading essays? How do good readerslpoor writers
and poor readerslgood writers differ in the use of the different types of lexi-
cal cohesion at different educational levels? Research to address all these
questions might provide us with new and specific ways to assess students'
progress in essay writing. It might also offer new insights into the effects of
training in literacy on intellectual growth.

Notes

1. I am deeply grateful to Mark McQuillan, and especially to Richard L. Larson, for all their
many questions and comments on earlier drafts of this essay.
2. Mina Shaughnessy, Errors and Expectations: A Guide for the Teacher of Basic Writing (New
York: Oxford University Press, 1977).
446 College Composition and Communication

3. Michael A. K. Halliday and Ruqaiya Hasan, Cohesion in English (London: Longman Group
Ltd., 1976).
4. Sandra Stotsky, "Teaching the Vocabulary of Academic Discourse," Journal ofBasic Writ-
ing, 2 (FalVWinter, 1979), 15-39, and "The Vocabulary of Essay Writing: Can It Be Taught?"
CCC, 32 (October, 1981), 317-326.
5. Cleanth Brooks and Robert Penn Warren, Modern Rhetoric, 4th ed. (New York: Harcourt
Brace Jovanovich, Inc., 1979). Page numbers after each selection refer to this text.
6. Any idiomatic expression, such as high school, bring up, or ahead of, as well as an individual
word, was counted as one word. A repeated phrase, as well as a repeated word or idiomatic
expression, was counted as one repetition.
7. Lee Odell, "Measuring Changes in Intellectual Processes as One Dimension of Growth in
Writing," in Evaluating Writing: Describing, Measuring, Judging, ed. Charles R. Cooper and Lee
Odell (Urbana, IL: National Council of Teachers of English, 1977).
8. Vocabulary exercises in both elementary and secondary instructional materials tend to use
these same categories and regularly teach how words are related as antonyms, synonyms, deriva-
tives, members of a set, or generic and specific words.
9. Stephen Witte and Lester Faigley, "Coherence, Cohesion, and Writing Quality," CCC, 32
(May, 1981), 189-204.
10. Robert Morris Hopkins, Popular Scientifir Discourse: A Rhetorical Modelfor Teaching Writ-
ing and Reading, Diss. University of Missouri-Columbia, 1979, Tables 5 and 6, pp. 98-99. It
seems reasonable to assume that Witte and Faigley were probably more familiar with the topics
of the essays written by the college freshmen in their research than Hopkins was with the topics
of the articles he analyzed. For his research, Hopkins analyzed articles written by professional
scientists for the layman on such topics as "The Solidification of Cement," "The Structure of Cell
Membranes," and "Nitrogen Fixation Research." These articles had been randomly selected
from journals that were recommended by science professors.
11. A comprehensive but compact guide for secondary teachers to use in helping their stu-
dents to analyze and evaluate all aspects of an expository essay has been prepared by Richard
Larson, "Teaching the Analysis of Expository Prose," English Journal 57 (November, 1968),
1156-62.
12. James Moffett, Active Voice: A Writing Program Across the Curriculum (Montclair, NJ:
BoyntoniCook Publishers, Inc., 1981).
13. David Bartholomae, "The Study of Error," CCC, 31 (October, 1980), 259.
14. Patricia Lauber, "A Park of Life," in Exploring Paths, Level 13, ed. Margaret Early, Donald
Gallo, and Gwendolyn Kerr, HBJ Bookmark Reading Program (New York: Harcourt Brace
Jovanovich, 1979), p. 269.
15. John M. Scott, "What Makes Sound?", in Building Bridges, Level 10, ed. Margaret Early,
G . Robert Canfield, Robert Karlin, and Thomas A. Schottman, HBJ Bookmark Reading Pro-
gram (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1979), p. 279. This passage contains 89 words in
7 sentences, 42 different words, and 17 cohesive ties created by repetition. The Grade 7 passage
contains 96 words in 7 sentences, 61 different words, and 12 cohesive ties created by repetition.
16. The optimum "match between well-written material and the developing reader is clearly
a critical pedagogical judgment. To make such a match, the teacher needs to be able to judge
both the difficulty of the reading material and the ability of the student. Various readability
formulas have been developed to estimate the former and standardized reading tests the latter.
17. Richard Venezky, "The Origins of the Present-Day Chasm Between Adult Competency
and Literacy Instruction," unpublished paper presented at the Conference on Literacy and Com-
petency, Harvard Graduate School of Education, May, 1981.
18. Andrea Lunsford, "What We Know-and Don't Know-about Remedial Writing," CCC,
29 (February, 1978), 47-52.
19. Philip Dale, Language Development: Structure and Function (Hinsdale, IL: Dryden Press,
1972), p. 144.
20. Lev Vygotsky, Thought and Language, trans. Eugenia Hanfmann and Gertrude Vakar
(Cambridge, MA: M.I.T. Press, 1962), p. 100.