Understanding discourse means constructing a coherent representation in which a number of coherence relations must be either inferred or must be explicitly stated. In spite of a good number of different and adequate proposals in the literature, there is still no theoretically satisfying account of the links that make a discourse coherent.

An adequate account of the relations establishing coherence has to be psychologically plausible, because coherence relations are ultimately cognitive relations. But what we can find in the literature is a mixture of formal, semantic and pragmatic characteristics that make a unified proposal quite problematic. By “formal” we understand the relationship between two clauses through a grammatical link, usually a relative pronoun or just a pronoun. The result of that relationship is normally an expansion of the meaning in the first clause, such as additional details.

The second and more interesting group of links are those that establish a semantic relationship of the type reason-result, cause-effect, means-end, etc. (cf. Loos, 1999). Sanders, Spooren & Noordman (1992) give a thorough review of the literature on discourse relations and offer a typology of coherence relations (1992: 11). A basic distinction between semantic and pragmatic meaning is at the core of the analysis as well as the type of basic (semantic) operation. But even so it is not very clear why a type of relation such as instrument-goal is classified under the basic operation of “causal”. Yet the criteria followed for the difference between pragmatic and semantic coherence relations are well-grounded.

In this presentation we propose a much broader range of semantic relationships that can hold between clauses either explicitly stated or inferred, since what is working at the core of a discourse cognitive relation is a schema (or frame, o script) where that relationship holds. So we could say that the following clauses

Shakespeare will always be a landmark in world literature. Hamlet scrutinises the complexity of human soul.

are coherent because they hold a relationship grounded on “factitivity” (author writes works); or the relationship can be made explicit by adding “his work…”

These types of relationship have been largely ignored in the literature on discourse, which makes the understanding of discourse coherence rather limited. The same applies to relationships such as opposition, contrast, part-whole, agency, analogy, etc.

The analogy relationship (Jones, 1986:44) opens the door to figurative language and transferred to discourse analysis we can establish coherence relations through metaphoric relations. The same applies to metonymy (Al-Sharafi, 2004) through which not only cohesion but coherence relationships make texts understandable.

The second proposal of this presentation is the paramount role of cognitive schemas in terms of the grounding of coherence relationships. In this respect it is interesting to discuss a very common relationship, exception, as in the following example:

He is rich but mean (‘although he is rich, he is a mean person’)

Here what is contrasted is not rich vs. mean, since the actual opposition would be rich vs. poor. What is contrasted –through counter-expectation– is one possible quality of rich people, such as philanthropy or generosity, which belong to the schema “rich person” as a natural characteristic. The same could apply to He is poor but generous. ‘Generosity’ stands as a characteristic of human beings, either poor or rich. Again the schema ‘human being’ is at work. The role of schemas is paramount in order to understand the grounding of discourse coherence, which somehow blurs the distinction between pragmatic and semantic meaning.

References:

Al-Sharafi, A. 2004. Textual Metonymy. A Semiotic Approach. New York: Palgrave Macmillan

Jones, Karen S. 1986. Synonymy and Semantic Classification. Edinburgh University Press

Loos, Eugene E. (ed.) 1999. "Logical Relations in Discourse". The Summer Institute of Linguistics. Dallas, Texas: Academic  Publications.

Otal, José L. 2003. The experiential grounding of general semantic relations”. In Languages in a Global World. Jaén: Servicio de Publicaciones de la Universidad.

Sanders, Ted J. M., Wilbert P.M Spooren & Leo G.M. Noordman. 1992. “Toward a Taxonomy of Coherence Relations”. Discourse Processes 15, 1-35.