Cohesion is divided into grammatical and lexical types. If Grammatical Cohesion creates structural links in a text, lexical cohesion builds meaning through vocabulary patterns. From an SFL perspective, lexical choices are not random—they form semantic networks that give a text unity, depth, and thematic focus. While grammatical cohesion relies on structural ties (reference, substitution, etc.), lexical cohesion operates through patterns in the lexis itself.
Lexical cohesion refers to the way vocabulary items relate to each other across a text. These relations create continuity of meaning and help readers recognize what a text is “about.” According to Halliday, there are two major types of lexical cohesion: Reiteration and Collocation
- Reiteration
Reiteration is the repetition of a lexical item, or the use of a related word, to keep the “topic” alive in the reader’s mind. It moves from simple repetition to more abstract relationships.
- Repetition: Using the exact same word.
Example: “The cat sat on the mat. The cat was sleepy.”
- Synonymy: Using a word with the same or similar meaning.
Example: “I bought a new car. The vehicle is incredibly fast.”
- Hyponymy (General to Specific): A relationship of “type-of.”
Example: “She loves flowers. She especially likes tulips.”
- Meronymy (Part to Whole): A relationship of “part-of.”
Example: “The house was beautiful. However, the roof needed repair.”
In SFL terms, reiteration supports field development as it helps build and maintain the experiential domain of the text.
- Collocation
Collocation refers to lexical items that frequently co-occur or belong to the same semantic field. For example:
The storm intensified overnight. Heavy rain flooded the streets, and strong winds damaged buildings.
“Storm,” “rain,” “winds,” and “flooded” belong to a shared semantic domain of severe weather. Collocation also runs on a spectrum from strong to weak. A strong link is where certain words tend to ‘go together’. Winds are “strong” and rain is “heavy”, but not the other way around. Unlike reiteration, collocation doesn’t depend on repetition but on associative meaning. These patterns are often subtle but powerful in building texture.
When reiteration and collocation occur repeatedly across a text, they form lexical chains—strings of semantically related words that run through the discourse. For example the topic of education reform would contain several related lexical items:
The government proposed new curriculum guidelines. The reforms emphasize digital literacy. Teachers have expressed concern about the changes.
Here, “curriculum,” “reforms,” and “changes” form a lexical chain that sustains the topic.
Lexical chains are crucial in longer texts such as academic essays, reports, and research articles. They signal to readers what the central concerns are. In academic texts, for example, strong lexical cohesion often appears as:
- Controlled repetition of key terms
- Nominalization (e.g., develop → development)
- Technical vocabulary clusters
- Thematic progression built around lexical chains
From an SFL perspective, repetition is not stylistic failure—it is a meaning-making resource.
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