The Lexical Cohesive Devices in the Conceptual Meaning of ‘Hero’:

A Pragmatic Discourse Analysis

Elsa Maulita Siahaan

, Rosaria Mita Amalia

, Eko Wahyu Koeshandoyo

Elvi Citraresmana

, Lia

Maulia Indrayani

, Ypsi Soeria Soemantri

, Sutiono Mahdi

Faculty of Humanities, Universitas Padjadjaran, Jatinangor, Jawa Barat, Indonesia

Department of English Linguistics, Jatinangor, Jawa Barat, Indonesia,

elvi.citraresmana@unpad.ac.id, lia.maulia@unpad.ac.id, ypsi.soeria@unpad.ac.id, sutiono.mahdi@unpad.ac.id

Keywords: lexical cohesive devices, concept of ‘hero’, CahayaBangsa Classical School, descriptive writing, pragmatic

discourse analysis

Abstract: Writing as one of language abilities involving multi-learning skills, experiences, and also cognitive

processes can be obtained in descriptive writing. The aim in this research isto investigate the concept of

“hero” in The English Second Language learners’ descriptive writing by third grade students observed using

one of Halliday and Hassan’s five categories of cohesive devices, lexical cohesive devices, to enhance their

overall texts’ communicability as devices are prominent to textual cohesion. The data of the features

generally come from texts, oral and written, in any documents or transcripts. This paper focuses on (1) the

type of lexical cohesion features occur in the third grade descriptive writing, (2) the difference concept of

‘hero’ obtained through the lexical cohesion features occured in the third grades’ descriptive writing based

on the student’s perspectival system. The method of this study is a descriptive qualitative research by first

collecting, classifying, and then analysing the data, finalized in drawing conclusion. The data analysed are

taken from the descriptive writing produced by Indonesian third grade students of Cahaya Bangsa Classical

School (CBCS) obtained in January 2019. This is a case study constructedbased on four previous researches

in which specifies to the twelve (12) Indonesian third grade students. In result, both types of lexical

cohesion features appear in the students descriptive writing which mostly are simple repetition, substitution,

and equivalence, whereas only the first type collocation, ordered-set, that mostly appears one time. In

conclusion, it is understood that the child processes their ‘hero’ concept by describing the characteristics of

those whom they acknowledge as their heroes from the last clause in each of their descriptive writing.

1 INTRODUCTION

Everyone learns language started by learning the

motherlanguage before others even if there will be

mistakes occurred. The meaning of language is to

communicate among individuals known as a

signalling system that fulfils the purpose of

communication by having vocal sound operated

within (Suhono in Puspita&Hasyim, 2017). In

addition, one of the sciences that must be learned by

all people is English language which has four

different skillssuch as speaking, listening, reading,

and writing. Writing skill is however recognized as

the most difficult one, especially the academic one is

hard which takes study and a lot of practice to

master this skill (Hoshima and Hogue in Siburian,

2013). The writer has different perspective about

writing not being a product but the process or review

and revise since through writing there will be the

result. The result of writing is a final product of

writing.

There is narrative, expository, persuasive, and

descriptivetype of writings (Jeffrey, 2016). Stated

accordingly, descriptive writing can be found in

mostly fiction although it can also be found in

nonfiction in such as momoirs or travel guides. He

added that when a person writes a descriptive style,

this author paints a picture of a person, place, or

things in words for the reader or listener. They might

also employ metaphors or any literary devices in

describing the author’s impression using their five

138

Siahaan, E., Amalia, R., Koeshandoyo, E., Citraresmana, E., Indrayani, L., Soemantri, Y. and Mahdi, S.

The Lexical Cohesive Devices in the Conceptual Meaning of ‘Hero’: A Pragmatic Discourse Analysis.

DOI: 10.5220/0008995201380143

In Proceedings of the International Conference on Education, Language and Society (ICELS 2019), pages 138-143

ISBN: 978-989-758-405-3

senses(see, hear, smell, taste or touch) without trying

to convince the reader or listener of anything being

explained in the scenes – the author only describes

things as they are. More specifically, the generic

structure of descriptive writing is enhanced such as

identification in which describing the identified

phenomenon and description in which parts,

qualities or characteristics of something or someone

is described (Gerot&Wignell in Masitoh and

Surpijadi,2015). Along with that statement, tt is also

broadened that descriptive writing applies linguistics

feature such as (1) specific participant or the main

character, (2) the use of present tense, (3) the use of

linking verb, (4) the existence of action verb, mental

verb, and mental process, (4) the nominal groups, (5)

adjective, and (6) adverb and adverbial phrase. Thus

being stated, it is clear that descriptive writing has

the purpose to give a certain information about

particular place, person, and place, and the use of

linguistic features are definitelyrequired in this

writing.

Related to the process of writing itself, it is then

specified that children age 7-9 develop improved

handwriting, group sentences about one idea joined

together to make a paragraph, start adding not only

spaces between words, but also capital letters in the

beginning of a sentence and punctuation at the end

(Morin, 2014). In addition, they also learn to write

contraction in their sentences, make compound

sentences, and insert the adjective and adverb in

their writing to be more descriptive.Related to that,

the process of writing is then more functionally

developed in the age of 8-9-year-old child which is

in third grade level (Anderson, 2011).In addition,

two out twenty-one (21) common characteristics a

third grader is good at caring about process and

product; being eager for approval of their friends

and adults, and also are increasingly interested in

logic, classification, and the way things work.

Therefore, the third grade students’ descriptive

writing is interesting to be analysed. Therefore, to

investigate about the conceptual meaning of ‘hero’

in the students’ writing, according to the

children’perspective, the lexical cohesive devices

tools are used to comprehend the third graders

conceptual meaning of “hero” in their descriptive

writing.

There have been some previous researches

conducted associated to this current research such as

first entitled Lexical Cohesion In Student Academic

Writing(Susan Lousie Van Tonder, 1999) which

focuses the study on examining the lexical cohesion

occured in the random writing of undergraduate

students studying the course regarding to the

question required the students to write an answer of

an expository nature based on the discussion of a

literary text, in this case Animal Farm by George

Orwell. Another one isentitled A Cognitive

Approach to Cohesion and Coherence in Dholuo

Narrative (OkothBellah Queen, 2015)focuses in

determining the cohesion features to beanalysed

using frames and profiles theories. Moreover, the

other article entitled Use of Cohesive Devices in

Children and Regular Literature: Conjunction and

Lexical Cohesion(Mohammad RaoufMoini, 2016)

focuses the potential similarities and differences

between literature for children and adult level

(regular) with respect to the frequency of lexical

cohesive markers and conjunctions.Furthermore,

another article entitled Discourse Analysis on the

Cohesion of Descriptive Writing Produced by

Students of UIN RIL Lampung(NurulPuspita and

Umar Al faruq A Hasyim, 2017) which focuses in

both cohesion features in university students in

Lampung. Finally, the most recent research

conducted is entitled TheUse of Lexical Cohesion

Elements In Writing of ESL learners (Kadiri,

Igbowke, Okebalama, and Egbe, 2016) focuses the

study investigating the use of lexical cohesion

elements in the students of English as Second

Languagein the University of Nigeria.

This research is different from the previous ones

for this research analysesthe occurrence of lexical

cohesive devices used by the third grade Indonesian

students applying the devices on their descriptive

writing that can convey their conceptual meaning of

a hero in their life. It is important to be conducted in

order to give comprehension towards the usage of

having lexical cohesive devices on the written text to

students and more of exposure for the English

teacher in order to improve the text coherence for

different level to have mutual understanding

between the author and the reader or listener. For

other researchers, this research can also be beneficial

as the alternative way to see the important usage of

the discourse features namely cohesion on the

written text. In short, this research hopefully gives

benefit to the students, teacher, and the others

researcher in order to obtain recent information on

the cohesion and its weight to written text.

2 THEORETICAL

BACKGROUND

A text recognizes the process of instantiation; and

possible to be characterized by reference to the

The Lexical Cohesive Devices in the Conceptual Meaning of ‘Hero’: A Pragmatic Discourse Analysis

139

system as the selection of systemic options

clarifying over time (Halliday and Matthiessen,

2014). The text is considered good when the

cohesion features exist in the text. Cohesion can be

defined as the set of resources for building relations

in discourse that exceeds grammatical structure

where meaning is focused into a useable present of

discourse (Martin in Tannen, 2015),. Cohesion is

one of the aspects in the study of coherence in which

the reading position is established by texts for

listener or readers involving understanding and

expectations about the social context a text

dynamically interprets. In SFL, social context is

modelled through register and genre theory,

conjunction, and lexical cohesion.

The account of cohesive devices which Halliday

refers as the ‘textual meta-function’ is subdivided

into five (5) categories, such as (1)Referenceis the

resources for referring to a participant or

circumstantial element that has a recoverable

identity including demonstratives, the definite

article, pronouns, comparatives, and the phoric

adverbs here, there, now, and then; (2) Ellipsis that

is useful to omit a clause, or some part of a clause or

group within the contexts having the content

assumed, such as English conversation, rejoinders

which are often made dependent through omissions

of this kind, for example:Did they win? –Yes, they

did; (3) Substitution is a set of place holders used to

signal the omission including so and not for clauses,

do for verbal groups, and one for nominal groups in

English conversation; (4) Conjunction is known as

much larger register of connectors that bond clauses

in discourse. Halliday and Mattiessen involve linkers

that connect sentences to each other but excluding

paratactic and hypotactic (coordinating and

subordinating) linkers within sentences, in which

considered structural, whereasGutwinski (2007)

includes all connectors, whether or not they link

clauses within or between sentences. This difference

reflects in part a territorial disagreement over how

much work the grammar is expected to do in

discourse analysis. . Therefore, even there are

differences, Gutwinski (1971) and Halliday and

Hassan (1976) do play important role in contributing

the fundamental perspective in understanding

cohesion; (5) Lexical Cohesion is known as the

complement of grammatical cohesion involving

open system items (open class words) such as

synonymy, or near synonymy (including hyponymy)

and collocation)) for expectancy relations between

lexical items (e.g., the mutual predictability of

strong and tea, but not powerful and tea).

Given specific detail regarding to lexical

cohesion, Tanskanenasserted in more detailed

description and classification of the lexical cohesion

based on previous theory by Halliday and Hasan

model (Tanskanen, 2006). She in concerned by how

cohesion is used to achieve coherence in different

text types, which one of them is the academic

writing. In addition, her interesting work model in

the perspective of discourse because can be applied

to analyse cohesion in different text types by

borrowing some categories from the previous

models such as from Halliday and Hassan, Morris

and Hirst (1991), and Hoey (1991). It is considered

that her model “provided a good basis for

understanding the work done by lexical cohesion in

discourse (Tanskanen, 2006, p.49). To Tanskanen,

once the author of a discourse produce texts and use

the cohesive devices to be the signals for the reader

or listener to interpret the signals and decode

information from the texts, both of them are

considered to be collaborating toward coherence.

In the proposed model, she grouped lexical

cohesion into two main categories such as reiteration

and collocation. After that, she describes eight (8)

subcategories for reiteration including Simple

repetition, Complex repetition, Substitution,

Equivalence, Generalization, Specification, Co-

specification, and Contrast. Moreover, she discovers

collocation are also used to achieve cohesion which

subdivided into three subcategories such as Ordered

–set, activity related and elaborative relations are

three kinds of collocation in her model of lexical

cohesion. Yet she also concludes that through

collocation, the cohesion is rarely achieved.

Table 1: Lexical Cohesion Features

The first main category of lexical cohesion is

repetition. Repetition is subdivided into two,the

simple and complex ones (Tanskanen, 2006). Simple

repetition, the first category, occurs when something

is repeated either in an identical form or with others

that only changes simple grammatical portion such

as singular-plural, present tense –past tense.

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140

Complex repetition as the second categoryrather

includes a more significant change in which the

item(s) may be identical but perform different

grammatical functions, or they may not be identical

but share a lexical morpheme. The third category is

substitution which most usual form occurs is a

pronoun substituting a noun. She agrees to Hoey

(1991) stating that even though pronouns are usual

part of grammatical cohesion, they can still have

similar function to full repetitions which is the

reason she includes substitution as part of

reiteration. The Equivalence is the fourth. After

McCarthy (1998), the notion equivalence is used to

refer to the relation more commonly referred to

synonymy, specific approach which then being

implemented to analyse the lexical relation in

discourse. As Tanskanen specifies that the

significance issue for this kind of approach to lexical

relations is to take an item for instance in

equivalence with another item, although they may

not be semantically absolutely synonymous.

Generalization, the fifth, refers to the relationship

between an item and a more general item, in which

commonly known as superordinate or hyponymic

relation. As the sixth, Specification refers to an item

and a more specific item called meronymy, and

McCarthy referred to it as inclusion: general-specific

(Tanskanen, 2006). The seventh category is Co-

specification which refers to the relation between

two items that have a common general item. In the

earlier studies, it is called as co-hyponymy and co-

meronymy. Finally, the last category is the contrast,

in which referring to the relation between an item

and the other that has an opposite meaning. This

relation has other notion such as antonymy,

opposition, or complex repetition or paraphrase

(Tanskanen, 2006 pg.59).

The second main category of lexical cohesion is

collocation. This category is often controversial in

the kind relation between words which most of the

times has been excluded from analysis. Despite of

the difficulties, it is still the member of lexical

cohesion features that is able to be analyzed.

Collocation is subdivided into three parts. The first

one is Ordered-set collocation involves members of

ordered set of lexical items such as colours,

numbers, months, and the days of the week and the

like. It is the easiest one to recognize compared to

the other two. Since this set is commonly clearer,

these relations are easy enough to find in texts,

however it could seem to be uncommon in the

present study. In example, today-tomorrow-

yesterday, or Monday – the Saturday night. The

second one is Activity-related collocation relating

words to each other based on an activity. For

example (1) cyphers – decode (You can decode

cyphers), (2) meals – eat, (3) driving- the same car.

In classifying such examples, it may be helpful to

think of the word’ association as the result from the

relation (Tanskanen, 2016 pg.62). The last one is

Elaborative collocation referring to the association

that neither can be considered as an ordered- set nor

as an activity-related collocation. It is defined based

on frame theory. Frames are knowledge structures

which are evoked by lexical items. Foe example, if a

text starts with arraignment, it arouses the

arraignment frame, and such words asmagistrate

and charges are interpreted according to this frame

resulting in the creation of coherence in the text

(Fillmore 1985; Fillmore & Baker 2001:3 in

Tanskanen 2006 pg.63).

Evans (2007: 85) explained that a frame is a

schematization of experience or a knowledge

structure which is represented at the conceptual level

and understood in long time memory and which

relates elements and entities associated with a

particular culturally embedded scene, situation, or

event from human experience. The essential idea to

understand the frames is that one thins cannot

understand the meaning of a single word without

having the access to all the essential knowledge that

is related to that word. For example, to understand

the word sell, we understand that there should be an

obligatory seller, buyer, and also goods to sell in

particular for the word ‘buying’ to take place. This

statement explains how a word activates a frame of

semantic knowledge relating to the specific concept

it refers to or highlights.

3 METHODOLOGY

The data of this study is taken from the descriptive

writings written by the Indonesian Third Grade

students of Cahaya Bangsa Classical School. This

school is located in Kota Baru Parahyangan, West

have seen from the occurrence of the lexical

cohesion features. In this case, the writer focuses on

the lexical cohesive devices that the students use by

using discourse analysis approach. Java. This data is

interesting because the writer sees the different

concept of hero the third graders

This study uses qualitative research with case

study. Denzin and Lincoln (2005) described that a

qualitative research as involving “… an interpretive

naturalistic approach to the world. This means that

qualitative researchers study things in their natural

settings, attempting to make sense of or interpret

The Lexical Cohesive Devices in the Conceptual Meaning of ‘Hero’: A Pragmatic Discourse Analysis

141

phenomena in terms of the meanings people bring to

them.” (p. 3).

[Qualitative research is] research using methods

such as participant observation or case studies which

result in a narrative, descriptive account of a setting

or practice. (Parkinson &Drislane, 2011). Therefore,

qualitative researchers are interested in

understanding the meaning people have constructed,

that is, how people make sense of their world and

the experiences they have in the world. (Merriam,

2009, p. 13)

4 RESULTS AND FINDINGS

Table 2: Categories Conceptual Meaning

Based on the twelve data obtained, there are

twelve different categories conceptual meaning of

‘hero’given below. Each student’s category of ‘hero’

concept obtained here is taken from the original

thoughts of each in the descriptive writing, therefore,

there must be seen grammatical and punctuation

error above. Based on the model proposed by

Tanskanen (2006) for lexical cohesion and that of

Halliday and Matthiessen (2004) had previously, it

is shown that lexical cohesion features, reiteration

and collocation, occur in the twelve data obtained

from the third-grade students’ descriptive writing.

Based on the occurrence of reiteration, there are

nine data that show the occurrence of simple

repetition, substitution, and equivalence. There is

one data that shows the occurrence of simple

repetition and equivalence. There is one data that

shows the occurrence of simple repetition,

substitution, equivalence, and specification. There is

one data that shows the occurrence of simple

repetition, substitution, equivalence, and co-

specification.

Based on the occurrence of collocation, only

collocation type one, ordered- set collocation that

occur in the third grade students’ descriptive writing.

There are five data that show the two pairs of first

type collocation and there are seven data that have

one pair of first type collocation.

The concept of ‘hero’ occur mostly in the last

clause each student has in their descriptive writing.

The concept or value of hero is obtained based one

the utterance written by each student. The concept of

hero itself, based on the Anderson’ (2011)

characteristics list what third graders’ can do, two of

them stated that the third graders are good at such as

they usually care about process and product. One of

the processes is the concept of ‘hero’ that they

receive and resulted in the definition of who is the

hero for them related to the process. Based on the

results, it is understood that the child processes the

concept of his/her heroes by describing about the

characteristics of those that they believe as heroes

for them from the last clause. The amount of simple

repetition, substitution, and equivalence do influence

the conceptual meaning of ‘hero’ from each

respondent. The more amount they have, the more

they establish the understanding each respondent has

to describe about their ‘hero’.

Based on the twelve data obtained, both type of

lexical cohesion features appears in the third

graders’ descriptive writing with the conceptual

meaning of ‘hero’ do appear in the third graders’

descriptive writing. The lexical cohesive devices that

appear are simple repetition which appears 13 times

in 2 data, substitution which appears 3 times in 3

data, and equivalence which appears 5 times in 2

data, and also co-specification that appears 1 time in

1 data, whereas the collocation that appears is only

the first type, ordered-set colocation that mostly

appear one time.

In conclusion, it is understood that the child

processes the concept of his/her heroes by describing

about the characteristics of those that they believe as

heroes for them based on their conceptual

perspectival system based on personal experience

each of them have with them which mostly appear in

the last clause of their writing. The more amount of

lexical cohesion features appears in each

ICELS 2019 - International Conference on Education, Language, and Society

142

respondent’s writing, the more they know their

favorite hero(es) in their life, while if they are only

mentioned less, it means that the respondent’s do not

have detailed description of theirfavorite ‘hero’.

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