Abstract

This study is designed to investigate the frequency usage of lexical

cohesive devices in writing. Aside from that, this paper also establishes the
question of whether there is a significant difference(s) in using lexical
cohesive devices in terms of gender. About 23 senior AB English students of
Polytechnic University of the Philippines (PUP), 6 males and 17 females,
participated in this study. The instrument used for eliciting their writing
style and pattern in using the different cohesive devices is a writing
composition about World Peace. After collecting the subjects papers, the
data is analyzed using frequency distribution to determine the amount of
the frequency of the occurrence of cohesive devices. The cohesive devices
selected for the investigation are repetition, synonymy, antonymy, hyponymy
and meronymy. This study shows that the most frequent used lexical
cohesive devices is the repetition and that the least is the metonymy. This
study also shows the fact that the differences between male and female in
ways

of

writing

often

leads

to

different

notions,

meanings

and

interpretations given to certain statements.

Introduction
Discourse is an important part of an individuals life. Seldom it can be
realized but is continually used throughout ones existence. Based on an
article produced by the University of Sheffield, it can be described as a
language beyond the sentence that does not only deal with syntax,
phonology and morphology. This is the same definition of discourse given by
Leech (1983) and Schiffrin (1994) in formal approach. It is also seen as a
system of thought that deals with the fact that action and truth are not
universal, thus affected by history. There is no absolute truth and discourse
is a timeless form, a fragment of history from beginning to end (Foucault,
1972). Therefore the analysis of discourse considers the social and
historical context to which a spoken or written type of communication
happens.

In this sense, the researchers delve into written discourse analysis

particularly essays. Essays are basically written works citing in detail the
arguments and perceptions of the author given a certain or specific topic.
Aldous Huxley, a leading essayist, stated that people write essays so they
can express almost anything with their thoughts. Furthermore, Huxley
argues that when essays are studied, they can be easily analyzed by a threepole type of analysis. This means that the essay may exist in some kind of
world and one of these is called the personal and autobiographical which
typically means that the essayist writes mostly about him and his
experiences with the world. Second, the objective, the factual, and the
concrete-particular are included, the essayists do not speak directly of
themselves, but turn their attention to some literary or scientific or political
theme. Lastly, the abstract-universal in which the essayist have no personal
experiences but draws different abstract facts and then puts them together
in their essays. Huxley also states that the best essay consists of all these
poles.
On the other hand, Halliday and Hasan (1976) pointed out that
cohesion is very important in a text. Cohesion is the set of linguistic means
we have available for creating texture (Halliday and Hasan, 1976). They
believed that an element in the text is connected to another in any way
possible. Also, they noted that cohesiveness in text can be achieved through
reference, ellipsis, substitution, conjunction, and lexical cohesion. Lexical
cohesion was the main focus of the study. It refers to how lexical items
relate with each other and how it is connected as a whole. This type of
lexical device includes repetition, synonymy, antonym, hyponymy, metonymy
and collocation (Paltridge, 2006). However, collocation was not included in
this paper. Repetition refers to the words repeated in the text which can be
inflected for tense or number; synonymy pertains to words conveying the
same meaning; antonyms describes contrasting words; hyponymy deals with

general-specific relationship of words; and metonymy pertains to the

whole to part relationship of lexical items.
Several studies were conducted analyzing lexical cohesion devices
found in the written discourse of L2 learners.
One study used Chinese college EFL writing as corpus in discovering
features of lexical cohesion. It aimed to find out the particular type of lexical
cohesion that dominates the student writing and how much lexical cohesion
is affected by language proficiency and text type. Halliday and Hasans
(1976) framework was used to identify the lexical cohesive ties in the
students writing. Results revealed that repetition has dominance in Chinese
college EFL writing. In addition, the usage of lexical cohesion devices was
not affected by language proficiency but somehow influenced by writing in
different text types.
A comparative study made by Ahmadi and Mirzapour (2011) between
English and Persian research articles aimed to analyze the number and
degree of utilization of sub-types of lexical cohesion. The data consisted 60
research articles, 30 for each language. The results revealed that the most
frequent sub-types are repetition, collocation, and synonymy for both
languages. However, in English data, repetition and collocation were mostly
used while in Persian, repetition and synonymy were ahead of the line.
In

the

Philippine

context,

Mojica

(2006)

conducted

study

investigating the preferred types of lexical cohesion used by 30 ESL

learners from the Graduate School of De La Salle University- Manila. Half of
the population was enrolled in an English program while the other half were
from different programs besides English. The corpus of the data was
consisted of the conclusion section of the students academic papers. It was
revealed that among the lexical devices repetition was the most frequently
used followed by synonymy, antonyms, hyponymy, and text-structuring

words. It was suggested that the results can be useful in improving the
contents of reading and writing course of the university and in deciding
what exercises can be given in the classroom to help the students use
lexical cohesion to create better compositions.
In this paper, the researchers sought to find answers to the following
questions:
1. What lexical cohesion devices are present in the essays?
2. What devices are frequently used by the students?
3. What are the possible implications of these lexical devices as used
by the students?
4. Are there differences between the male and female writing in
terms of the lexical cohesion devices used?
Methodology
2.1 Study Corpus
The corpus of the study consisted 23 essays from the students of
Bachelor of Arts in English, 4th year section 1, S.Y. 2014-2015. The
compositions were written on December 11, 2014 during their class in
Discourse Analysis. The participants which is consisted of 6 male and 17
female were given instructions as to how they are going to write the essay:
it should be consisted of not less than 500 words; the topic tackles about
World Peace; one and a half hour is allotted to finish the work.
2.2 Data Collection and Method of Analysis
Last December 11, 2014, during the participants class in Discourse
Analysis, they were given one and a half hour of allotted time to make and
essay

about

World

Peace.

Based

on

the

given

instructions,

the

participants must produce an essay consisting of not less than 500 words.
By then, the 23 essays made by the participants are used as subjects for
analysis. Then, a qualitative analysis was applied to each compositions in

order to identify and classify each lexical reiteration used by the

participants. In the classification and counting of lexical reiteration, we
followed the taxonomy proposed by Halliday and Hasan (1976), which
comprises of categories: repetition, hyponyms, and synonyms. To this
classification, we added two additional categories: metonyms and antonyms.
These two are included in more recent classifications of lexical cohesion as
proposed by Hoey (1991) and by Martin (1992). In order to warrant
reliability in the identification, classification and counting lexical reiteration
ties, the process was carried out by the authors of this study.
Results and Discussion
Students

Repetition

Synonyms

Antonyms

1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23

12
18
11
10
6
3
6
3
3
3
6
7
5
5
3
2
10
8
5
1
2
4

3
2
2
6
3
4
1
3
3
1
4
3
4
3
2
1
3
1
1
2
3

2
3
1
1
1
3
1
3
3
1
1
5
2
6
4
3
3
1
5
4
3
3

Hyponym
y
1
2
1
1
3
1
2
4
6
3
3
7
3
2
1
5
3

Metonymy
1
1
1
2
3
2
1
3
-

Total
133
55
59
48
14
Table 1. Distribution of detected lexical reiteration found in the
essays.

Our first objective was to identify the lexical reiteration used by the
students. The table 1 shows the number of participant students as Female
students (highlighted in pink) dominates the table while Male that was
highlighted in blue was subordinated by the female students. The table
exhibits lexical reiteration categories: repetition, synonyms, antonyms,
hyponyms and metonyms as proposed by Hasan (1976), Halliday (1976),
Hoey (1991) and Martin (1992). And as can be inferred from the distribution
shown in Table 1, a great number from the participants make use of
repetition.
As can be seen from the frequencies and the percentages shown in
Table 2, word repetition with a frequency of 133 or 43.04% is the most
frequent lexical cohesive device tie in the composition of the students,
followed by antonyms, synonyms and hyponyms. The least frequently used
device used by the student is metonymy.

Lexical Cohesive
Frequency
Percentage
Devices
133
43.04%
Repetition
55
17.80%
Synonyms
59
19.09%
Antonyms
48
15.53%
Hyponymy
14
4.73%
Metonymy
TOTAL
309
100 %
Table 2. Frequency distribution of lexical cohesive devices used by
the students.
Discussion
This finding may be attributed to many possible factors such as,
cohesion development is related to vocabulary development (Carrell, 1983).
That is, vocabulary acquisition is left to the students initiative. This results
in writings that are not natural and are full of repetition. Hoey (1991) was
the first to provide a comprehensive analytical model which reveals the

organizing function of lexical repetition in texts. In his view, the role of

grammatical cohesion is less significant than that of lexical cohesion,
therefore, he focused on words with lexical meaning. He analyzed
newspaper articles to demonstrate how patterns of lexical repetition work
between adjoining sentences and over considerable distances within a given
text. He devised a new taxonomy of lexical repetition types. Hoey (1991)
defines the key concepts of his taxonomy in the following way:

Simple lexical repetition occurs when a lexical item that has already
occurred in a text is repeated with no greater alternation than is
entirely explicable in terms of a closed grammatical paradigm (p.
55).
The following extractions were taken from the essays that was used,

these extractions shows part of the essays in which they used different
lexical cohesive devices.
World peace, every countrys goal
What is world peace?
World peace is just an illusion
Most religions had sought world peace
Theres no such thing as world peace
The idea of world peace
We need world peace but it is not attainable
The word world peace here refers to the Noun: World Peace. The
type: reiteration, same item (repetition) and lexical category, identical
cohesive device.

Complex lexical repetition occurs either when two lexical items share
a lexical morpheme, but are not formally identical, or when they are
formally identical, but have different grammatical functions (p. 55).

Example:
...the more greedy (greedier) they became
the will become more greedy (greedier)
becoming greedy means you never stop until
full of people who are greedy.
The word greedy here refers to both Noun and Verb: Greedy. The
type: reiteration, same item (repetition) but different lexical category,
identical cohesive device.
Although Hoey presented these models as possible means to create
summaries, he did not give guidance on how to distinguish between their
qualities. He argued, however, that lexical repetition patterns revealed by
his analytical tool can indicate differences in text quality.
The overuse of repetition is another issue in foreign language
learners. The students use too much repetition. For many researchers, this
tendency is attributed to the influence of their mother tongue. To minimize
the students' use of repetition, teachers may encourage them to use
synonyms or near synonyms.
Synonyms as follows, is the experiential meaning of the two lexical
items which is identical; this does not mean that there is a total overlap of
meanings, it is simply so far as one kind of meaning that goes, mean the
same. Mccarty (1988) used the term equivalence to refer to the relation
more commonly referred as synonymy. As Tanskanen (2006) stated that the
significance issue for this is the language user's decision to use an item for
instance in equivalence with another item. Although some may not be
semantically synonymous. Using non-lexical semantic terms draws attention
to the fact that the explanation for a relation between lexical items can and
should be sought for in the text in which the item occur.
example taken from one of the essays:

Consider an

...and when you're reading a novel and nothing distracts you,

and your seatmate doesn't bother to annoy you.
The Verb "distract" means to cause (someone) to stop thinking about
or paying attention to someone or something and to think about or pay
attention to someone or something else instead. The word "annoy" is
synonymous to "distract" because it means to disturb the peace of mind of
(someone) especially by repeated disagreeable acts.
Results also shows that Metonyms and Hyponyms are least used
device by the students. This findings validates the studies on cohesion in
written discourse of non-native English speakers (Bae, 2001; Connor, 1984;
Khalil, 1989; Ferris, 1994; Meisuo, 2000), where learners have been
reported to resorts to word repetition rather than the other devices of
lexical cohesion such as metonyms and hyponyms. In contrast, in the
studies conducted by Connor (1984) and Scarcella (1984), no significant
differences were reported between the learners language level and
frequency of cohesive ties were found.

Table 3. Lexical Cohesion Frequently Used when grouped by gender

and what it implicates.
Each of the data in general may contain similarities to one another
especially that each of the person who have written the essay are only
writing one topic. In this section, the researchers will try to find out if there
are significant differences regarding the text should it be separated by
gender, and then conclude how these probable differences or similarities
may affect how the students who have written the essay express their
thoughts, and ideas regarding the similar topic to which they are pertaining
to.

The lexical cohesion which ranked the highest, or most used among
by the respondents is Repetition, gaining 32 in frequency or 24.06%, the
lowest or least used is Metonymy gaining 4 in frequency or 28.57%. Based
from the given set of data, and the analysis in which the researchers have
made from each of the text, the researchers have noticed that mostly, the
males are using Repetition in their text, or Synonymy; this may implicate
that respondents are trying to emphasize what they want to express in the
given topic. The males either talk generally on the positive or negative side
of the theme, and then sum it up or conclude later in their paragraph(s).
The most visible word being repeated, regardless of which gender and
regardless of which order it appears to in a sentence, or a paragraph in the
text is the word Peace, it must be noted however, that the students are
discussing the same topic which is about World Peace.
Male
Lexical Cohesion
Devices
Repetition
Synonymy
Antonymy
Hyponymy
Meronymy
TOTAL

Frequency

Percentage

32
12
12
17
4
77

41.56%
15.58%
15.58%
22.07%
5.19%
100%

Table 3.1. Lexical Cohesion Used by Males

Female
Lexical Cohesion
Devices
Repetition
Synonymy
Antonymy
Hyponymy
Meronymy
TOTAL

Frequency

Percentage

101
43
47
31
10
232

43.53%
18.53%
20.26%
13.36%
4.31%
100%

Table 3.2. Lexical Cohesion Used by Females

Discussion
There were no significant differences found between male and female
students in terms of the lexical cohesion devices used, although there were

notable differences between the accumulated frequency and percentage

between male and female students. The real problem is that lexical cohesion
is a question of awareness as indicated by many researchers (Kafes, 2012;
McGee, 2009). It should be brought to the learners awareness that
cohesion in their writings is achieved through the use of different types of
cohesive devises and that the use of conjunctions is not the only way to
connect sentences. Writing teachers should be aware that teaching
vocabulary should be part of the writing syllabus because cohesion is
mainly lexical. If students do not have an appropriate working vocabulary to
say what they want to say, they will resort to the use of too much repetition
and write unnatural and uncohesive texts. This could be partially supported
with the observation that though writing teachers generally talk about
learners incoherent and incohesive pieces of writings, these and the other
linguistic mechanisms that make a text coherent and cohesive are rarely but
vaguely dealt with as is underlined by Lee (2002). By drawing attention to
the same problem and underlying the claim that something is wrong with
how cohesion is viewed, Witte & Faigley (1981) underscore that cohesion
can be better taught if it is better understood. They also stress the fact that
not adequate training is given in most college writing classes. Given this
lack of adequate training on this issue and its benefits, we do have some
studies with promising results.
Though writing is dependent on knowledge of

grammar and

vocabulary to a great extent, it is more than the sum of grammar and

vocabulary knowledge. Given that a great number of learners having
somewhat adequate knowledge of vocabulary and grammar but being
inefficient in writing skilfully, coherently and cohesively, we can say that
something crucial is missing. Though students have the knowledge
necessary for writing especially in their mother tongue and in English to a
certain extent, they seem to have difficulty in making full use of this in their

writing endeavors. The reason for this could be the language instruction
they previously had.
Conclusion
This study looked into the use of lexical cohesion in foreign language
writing. The results of the study indicate that foreign learners of English
use repetition as a cohesive tie more than any other tie because they do not
know other ways to connect their paragraphs to form a unified whole.
Teachers also should be aware that lexical cohesion is a main contributor to
text coherence. In this sense, it has to be taught explicitly to improve the
students' writing.
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