COHESIVE RESOURCES: TYPES, EXAMPLES - LITERATURE - 2025

The Cohesive resources are a number of grammatical and lexical elements of character which are designed to unify the various premises that compose a text. Its fundamental objective is to give coherence to the speech to allow its understanding.

These resources have the function of links, constituting the semantic links that allow a text to be a communicative unit with meaning and significance. Cohesion has the power to enable lexical-grammatical relationships between the sentences that make up a text.

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A textual structure without the concrete and correct presence of the cohesion elements lacks unity, therefore it is considered a “non-text”. The basis, then, for the proper functioning and understanding of textual microstructures and macrostructures are cohesion resources.

The cohesion elements come to be a kind of "hooks" or "anchors" between the ideas scattered inside the text, in the different parts that make it up.

Cohesion therefore represents a relational notion. In itself it is not their presence that causes the union between the premises, but the intrinsic relationship between these premises evidenced by the cohesive resource used.

For the use of cohesive resources, the existence of at least two precepts to be linked is always presumed.

Types and examples

The different types of cohesive elements will be presented and defined below with their respective examples:

Reference

It is a semantic link that is used when there is a hypothesis or suspicion that needs to be validated. In order to elucidate the hypothesis, the specific information that allows its ratification is sought. This information is called a referrer.

There are different types of referents, conditioned by their origin. If the referent used is not present in the text, but is taken from the situational context, it is called “exophor”, and it is not considered cohesive because it does not link anything internally.

Now, if the reference to which it is used is found within the text, then it is considered coherent and it is called an “endophor”. This resource has two meanings: The anaphora and the cataphor.

Anaphora occurs in the text when a pronoun is used that refers to an element present in a previous sentence or paragraph.

For its part, the cataphor works in the opposite way to the anaphora, that is, it makes use of pronouns that will be resolved in the following propositions or premises.

Referential links work grammatically through the application of personal and possessive pronouns. This is called a "personal reference." It is also given by the use of demonstrative pronouns and adverbs. This is called a "demonstrative reference."

They are also presented by the use of articles and comparisons, which are called "associative reference" and "comparative reference", respectively.

Example 1

(Anaphora)

“Maria was late for class, there was a lot of traffic that day. The teacher did not accept the excuses, did not let her in or receive her work.

She returned home, sad and heartbroken ”.

In this case, the pronoun “she” refers to the name “María”, which appears in the previous paragraph, and functions as a cohesion of the two propositions.

Example 2

(Cataphor)

“He told her over and over again, but she wasn't listening, she wasn't listening. "Don't go there, that path is dangerous, Maria," Pedro repeated repeatedly, but Maria refused to listen to him and what happened happened. "

In this case we can see a triple cataphor, the pronouns "he" and "she", and the article "it", are resolved in the following proposition.

Substitution

It is a cohesive resource that generates a link between terms or linguistic expressions. It basically consists of replacing one expression with another or one term with another, to avoid its repetition in the text.

The expressions supplied do not necessarily have to be synonymous, however, contextually, they come to mean the same thing. The terms, for their part, are normally replaced by synonyms

There are those who tend to confuse “substitution” with “reference”, but in the latter the correspondence between the two elements is complete, while in substitution the term is always redefined.

Based on what is stated in the paragraphs, the existence of two types of substitution is evidenced: one by synonymy and the other by proformas.

By synonymy

One element is replaced by another, synonymous with it, in the following premise or proposition.

Example

“The dog bit her with immense force. The canine acted fiercely and smashed the woman's arm. "

By proformas

It occurs when a term or a phrase is supplied by equivalent lexical elements. The base element and the one it replaces must be coreferential.

In the Spanish language there are pronominal proformas (all pronouns, typical of anaphora), nominal, adverbial, adjectival and verbal (verb to do).

Examples

- “Joaquín is an excellent man of the sea, a worker like no other. The fisherman usually leaves early to the mangroves ”. (Nominal).

- “The soccer field was huge, I got tired of walking it. Everyone was doing sports there ”. (Adverbial).

- “Yesterday in the square there was a group of beautiful women. The brunette was the one I liked ”. (Adjectival).

- “José went and took the shortcut to get to school faster. He does it every time he gets up late ”. (Verbal).

Ellipse

It is an extremely cohesive textual resource. It basically consists in completely suppressing information whose existence is presumed contextually. It is a purifier of the text, it cleanses it of redundancy.

There is nominal and verbal ellipsis.

Examples

- “Bananas are extremely cheap. Jesus went for two (of them, or “bananas”) ”. (Nominal).

In this case, the deletion of the term “cambures” is evidenced, including its pronominal substitute, because its presence is presumed.

- - "Did you go fishing today?

-Yes, I went (fishing) ”. (Verbal)

Here, also by presumption, the verb "fish" is deleted.

Lexical reiteration

It consists of the repetition of a term throughout the text in order to emphasize an idea. Lexical reiteration can occur identically (repetition), similarly (by synonymy) or partially (by generality or hyperonym).

Examples

- “Juan went to get some eggs for dinner and stayed playing with his friends. That Juan, that Juan, is looking for what he has not lost! ”. (Repetition).

- “Pedro is now a carpenter. He is quite a cabinetmaker, he works beautifully ”. (Synonymy).

- “The crows have not stopped surrounding the garden. All birds are like that ”. (Hyperonymy).

Conjunction

Conjunctions are cohesive because they allow the interrelation of premises. However, they do not indicate direct links between particular elements of the statements, but their presence manifests an intrinsic relationship between the propositions to which it links.

The conjunctions themselves do not lead the reader to look for something specific in the following sentence, but rather place it in the congruence that exists between one sentence and the other due to the equivalence between their discourses.

There are four basic types of conjunctions: additive (in addition, on the other hand, on the other hand), temporal (after, before, after), causal (because of it, then, because) and adversative (but, however, not However).

Examples

- "She was an extremely intelligent woman, as well as an excellent housewife." (Additives).

- "He loved her, like no one else, after having suffered so much." (Temporary).

- "The factory had to close, because of that many people were left destitute." (Causal).

- "You are good at chess, but you lack a lot in football." (Adversative).

References

1. González Zunini, M. (1971). Textual cohesion: cohesive path. Uruguay: Prolee. Recovered from: anep.edu.uy
2. Bolívar, A. (2010). Cohesion resources in academic texts: A comparative study. Venezuela: Scielo. Recovered from: scielo.org.ve
3. Rodríguez González, A. (2011). Cohesive elements in the articles of the Papel Periódico de la Havana (1797). Cuba: UCM. Recovered from: webs.ucm.es
4. Textual cohesion. (2009). Colombia: Javeriano Writing Center. Recovered from: centrodeescritura.javerianacali.edu.co
5. Lexical and grammatical cohesion resources (2015). Spain: Wikiteka. Recovered from: wikiteka.com