Anaphora and cataphora on the select State of the City Addresses of the mayor of Dapitan

State of the City Address (SOCA) is a speech modelled after the State of the Nation Address, through which, the general public is made to know the performance of the local government unit and its agenda for the upcoming year. Therefore, it is imperative for SOCAs to clearly convey its message and carry out the myriad function of enlightening its readers which could be achieved through the proper use of reference. This paper seeks to identify the types of reference employed on the SOCAs from 2014 to 2016 of Hon. Rosalina Garcia Jalosjos, Mayor of Dapitan City and look into how the references contribute to the clarity of the message of the text. The qualitative method of research is used in this study through an in-depth analysis of the corpus. After a thorough analysis, it is found out that the two reference types namely, anaphora and cataphora are both employed on the three SOCAs, the former being used more frequently than the latter accounting to 80% and 20% of actual usage, respectively. Moreover, the use of anaphors and cataphors on the three addresses helps in conveying the message clearly because they primarily become aids to avoid the repetition of the same element in the text especially when there wasn’t a need to emphasize a point. Finally, it is recommended that writers of State of the City Addresses should have a vast knowledge on how reference should be used and the functions they take in the text, since this is a vital tool to clearly transmit a message.