Discourse, Cohesion and Genre
How extended spoken and written communication is organised through cohesion, coherence, information structure, sequencing, genre expectations and interactional moves.
How to study A-level English Language
Establish the data and context, identify a meaningful pattern using precise terminology, explain how it creates meaning, then connect, evaluate and qualify the interpretation.
Core concepts
Concept 1
Discourse analysis examines language beyond the clause within social and communicative contexts.
Exam cue: Trace how reference and lexical chains connect different parts of the discourse.
Concept 2
Cohesion creates explicit links through reference, substitution, ellipsis, conjunction and lexical patterning.
Exam cue: Identify the stage, move or turn and explain its contribution to the whole.
Concept 3
Coherence is the interpreted sense of connection and depends on knowledge, purpose, genre and organisation.
Exam cue: Treat genre as a flexible social pattern rather than a fixed checklist.
Risk pitfalls and guardrails
Using cohesion and coherence as synonyms.
Guardrail: Do not replace analysis with feature spotting, a memorised effect, a theorist's surname or an unsupported claim about an entire social group.
Analysing only sentence-level features in an extended discourse task.
Guardrail: Do not replace analysis with feature spotting, a memorised effect, a theorist's surname or an unsupported claim about an entire social group.
Assuming all texts in one genre share identical structure.
Guardrail: Do not replace analysis with feature spotting, a memorised effect, a theorist's surname or an unsupported claim about an entire social group.
Memory anchors
Discourse
Discourse is extended communication interpreted within social and textual context.
Cohesion
Cohesion consists of explicit linguistic links across a text or interaction.
Coherence
Coherence is the meaningful connectedness constructed by participants or readers.
Genre
A genre is a socially recognised pattern of communication associated with recurring purposes and contexts.
Information Structure
Information structure organises what is presented as given, new, prominent or connected.
Checkpoint rule
Do the check-up only after you can summarize each concept in one sentence and identify one dangerous pitfall from memory.
Knowledge Check (after reading)
Short check-up to confirm understanding of this module.
Check-up Questions
What does discourse analysis examine?
What is cohesion?
Answer all questions to submit.
Next step personalized recommendations
Continue learning
Move forward only after this module is stable.
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