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Use of Cohesive Devices in Children and Regular Literature: Conjunctions and Lexical Cohesion
Abstract
Cohesion is an indispensable linguistic feature in any discourse. Lexical Cohesion and conjunction as two crucial elements to textual cohesion and comprehension have been the focus of a wide range of studies up to now. Yet the relationship between the open register and cohesive devices has not been thoroughly investigated in discourse studies. This study concentrates on the potential similarities and differences between literature for children and adult level (regular) with respect to the frequency of lexical cohesive markers and conjunctions. To this end, selected excerpts of two contemporary famous novels were analyzed and codified for the use of different kinds of lexical cohesion (reiteration and collocation), conjunctions (elaboration, extension and enhancement) and their subcategories. The results of Chi square tests showed that the children and regular novel texts were significantly different in terms of reiteration and collocation as the main categories of lexical cohesion as well as total frequency of lexical cohesive pairs. Also, the use of conjunctions, elaboration and extension showed significant difference. Yet, the difference was non-significant for enhancement. The findings of this study add to the existing literature of research on cohesion and inspire researchers in discourse studies, child language studies, and English teaching and learning of young children.
Keywords: Cohesive devices, Conjunctions, Lexical Cohesion, Children, Literature
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