MIDTEST ON ENGLISH DISCOURSE ANALYSIS

Full name:Trần Trà My Group: K25A02 Test number 01

I. Find grammatical cohesive devices in the following extract:

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It is only natural to look forward something better. We do it all our lives. Things
may never really improve, but at least we always hope they will. It is one of life’s
great ironies that the longer we live, the less there is to look forward to. Retirement
may bring with it the fulfilment of a lifetime’s dreams. At last there will be time to
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do all the things we never had time for. From then on, the dream fades. Unless
circumstances are exceptional, the prospect of growing really old is horrifying.
Who wants to live long enough to become a doddering wreck? Who wants to
revert to that most dreaded of all human conditions, a second childhood?
- Conjunction: but, at least, at last, from then on
- Substitution: to look forward something better- do it (line 1-2),
- Ellipsis: “improve” is omitted (line 2)
- Reference: things-they (line 1-2), retirement-it (line 3-4), a lifetime’s
dreams-there (line 4-5)

II. Find lexical cohesion in the following extract:

Saved from tar pit

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LOS ANGELES (AP) – Rescue workers formed a human chain to save the life of
a 24-year-old man who plunged into the La Brea tar pits, a graveyard of prehistoric
animals, in an apparent suicide attempt, officials say.
Bruce Remy, who was totally immersed except for his face and one hand, escaped
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without injuries Sunday. But he had to spend four hours in the emergency room
while Cedars-Sinai Hospital workers scrubbed him clean with mineral oil.
Police spokesman sergeant Jim Richart said Remy apparently was trying to kill
himself when he entered the 10-meter-diameter pit, one of the smallest at the
country park. The pits of gooey tar have preserved the bones of prehistoric
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dinosaurs.
Remy told firefighters he was grateful that they had saved his life.

- Repetition: workers (1,6), save the life (1,11), prehistoric (2,9)

- Synononymy: rescue workers (1) - firefighters (11), an apparent suicide
attempt (3) - trying to kill himself (7), a graveyard of prehistoric animals (2)
- preserved the bones of prehistoric dinosaurs (9), plunged into (2)-
immersed (4)
- Antonymy: trying to kill himself (6) - save his life (11)
- Meronymy: a 24-year-old man (2) - Bruce Remy (4), face (4) – hand (4)
- General words:
Human noun: rescue workers (1), officials (3), police spokesman sergeant
(7), firefighters (11)
Place noun: the La Brea tar pits (2), Cedars-Sinai Hospital (6), country park
(9), emergency room (5), graveyard (2), LOS ANGELES (1)
Object noun: mineral oil (6), bones (9)
Non-human animate: prehistoric animals (2), prehistoric dinosaurs (9)

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III. Make brief comments on the cohesion of the following short text:

Confessions of an Ex-Catholic"
by Pat Conroy

From a God-struck child I have matured into a God-haunted adult. I wish to be rid
of him yet fear that I never will completely. Just as I always will be American and
Southern, I will always be Catholic. I left the Church but she has not left me.
This seems to be the universal condition of ex-Catholics. We said our goodbyes
but did not totally escape. For this reason, I am presenting my children with a gift. They
will never see the inside of a Catholic school or a Catholic Church. Their nightmares will
be free of nuns, priests, fire, and crucified gods. I am raising them as nothing at all.
They are free to make their own peace with the universe.
Yet I do not regret my education. I think no writer could regret a childhood which
included such a baroque and euphonic language. I loved words like sodality, litany, and
imprimatur. I loved the lists of names in the Proper of the Saints with its twisting,
Latinesque evocations: Andifax, Chrysogonous, Zaphyrinus, Ubaldus, Polycarp, and
Hermanigild. The priest I dressed for 6:15 mass wore an amice, a cincture, a chasuble,
and a stole while he performed the sacrifice of the mass during the asperges or on
Rogation Days or Quinquagesima Sunday. I loved the poetry of the Church prayers
even though I once got in trouble for telling a nun that the Douay-Rheims version of the
Bible (the Catholic version) was not as well written as the King James Version.
I loved Georgian chants, the sight of nuns at prayer on Good Friday, the sanctus
bells, the covered forms of saints during Lent, the drum roll of the confiteor with all the
sadness and elegance of a dead language filling a church and entering my bloodstream
at the ear, and the sunburst of gold when the priest raised the monstrous chalice at
consecration. I loved the ceremony, the adherence to tradition, and the arsenal of
metaphor. I have never recovered from the vividness of its imagery, from the daze of its
language. But I have never had a single day when I wished to be Catholic again.

The author used a lot of cohesive devices in this paragraph. They use a lot of words
which refer to Catholic. For example, there are church, saints, prayers, nun, priest
etc. Besides, the author use transition words and inter-clausal connectors such as
but, for, this reason, yet. They also use pronouns that refer back to a previously
mentioned noun.

The priest I dressed for 6:15 mass wore an amice, a cincture, a chasuble, and a
stole while he performed the sacrifice of the mass during the asperges or on
Rogation Days or Quinquagesima Sunday.

Also, they use Substitution of a synonym for a previously mentioned noun.

I loved the lists of names in the Proper of the Saints with its twisting, Latinesque
evocations: Andifax, Chrysogonous, Zaphyrinus, Ubaldus, Polycarp, and
Hermanigild.

Cohesive devices in this text tell the reader what the author are doing in a sentence
and help to guide them through our writing. They signal to the reader what the
relationships are between the different clauses, sentences and paragraphs.