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After reading these sentences one knows that this is a story of a brave girl.  However, the sentences are not logically sequenced.  Therefore it is not a discourse.

A discourse can be as short as a Japanese haiku or as big as the Mahabharat running into thousands of verses.  A discourse can take on a variety of shapes such as a letter, poem, short story novel, anecdote, epic, travelogue and so on.  A discourse can be in formal or informal style and it can be about any subject under the sun.  It can be about dogs, dons, politicians, sports stars, barbers or any other person or thing.

There are three linguistic cohesive devices that make a discourse coherent.  They are

1.                 reference

2.                 ellipsis

3.                 substitution

Reference is of two types : backward and forward.  When we are referring to things mentioned earlier we are referring back.  So it is called backward reference.  We use pronouns to refer to earlier things.  e.g. First the teacher read the story.  Then she asked questions based on it.

Here she refers to the earlier noun ‘teacher’ and it refers to the earlier noun ‘story’.

The use of the definite article the for backward reference is possible e.g.             

                        Yesterday I saw a man.  The man was crying.

Here the use of ‘the’ indicates we are referring to ‘man’ in the earlier sentence.

To refer to things that are mentioned later we can use several terms.  For example, we can use ‘this’ and ‘these’

You may not believe this but I never speak with girls.

These words were written on the wall:

                        ‘Long live Mr. Patel!’

Here ‘this’ and ‘these’ give us the idea of what is going to follow in the latter part of the sentence.

The second cohesive device is ellipsis.  It means omission of words and phrases which can be understood from context. Our speech sounds natural when we omit unnecessary expressions.  For example, if someone asks you ‘what is your name?’  You don’t answer it in a full sentence like  ‘My name is John’.   You simply say ‘John’.  Here are some more examples of ellipsis.

                        Have you done your homework?

            Yes, we have.

Here ‘done our homework’ is omitted.

                        When did she lose her purse?

            Last night.

Here, ‘She lost her purse’ is omitted.

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H M Patel Institute of English Training & Research, Vallabh Vidyanagar - 388120, Gujarat, India

Phone : 091-2692-230193, 091-2692-230079