THE TEXTURE OF A LITERARY TEXT: AN EXPLORATION OF TEXTUAL COHESION RESOURCES IN A TALE OF TWO CITIES

This descriptive qualitative-quantitative paper is an in-depth enquiry into how the textual cohesion resources are utilised in the construction of texture or textual cohesion meanings of a literary text – a topic that has received scarce attention in English literature teaching, learning and research, particularly at tertiary EFL (English as a Foreign Language) departments or faculties. The text under investigation is Chapter 1 entitled “The Period” of “Book the First” of the three-book novel A Tale of Two Cities by the famous British novelist Charles Dickens. The main theoretical framework adopted in this study is Halliday and Hasan’s (1976) textual cohesion model as propounded in their seminal monograph Cohesion in English. The aspects of analysis are grammatical and lexical cohesion resources. The study shows that Charles Dickens has deployed a diverse range of textual cohesion resources to construct texture of his text, among which four stand out. First, in terms of reference resources, there is a very high frequency of endophoric references. Second, as regards conjunction resources, additive relation predominates. Third, concerning lexical cohesion resources, repetition takes up the largest proportion. And fourth, virtually no substitution and ellipsis are utilised in the text. The study closes with a résumé of the points explored, the salient textual cohesion resources deployed in the text, a recommendation affirming the relevance of Halliday and Hasan’s textual cohesion model to the study of texture or textual cohesion meanings of texts in general and of literary texts in particular for EFL literature teaching, learning and research, and a suggestion for further study.