Coherence

This study aims to understand certain linguistic and semantic resources for the text construction, namely the constructs of cohesion, coherence. The analysis of cohesive ties was conducted on the writing samples of 40 subjects (20 most coherent and 20 least coherent) Iranian undergraduates of English. This prompted us to identify the dominant types of cohesive devices used in most coherent writing samples. The analysis of data revealed that both the writing samples were found highly dense in the use of reference. The correlation analysis also didn’t show any overlap between the referential ties and coherence.. Hence, we can claim that referential ties don’t play any role in making a text coherent. Among the five major types of cohesive classes, substitution and ellipsis were found least frequently used in both the writing samples. Their occurrence was less than 1%. It, therefore, seems that the two types of cohesive devices aren’t widely used in written discourse. In the collective data, since, their occurrence is not even noticed in any of the writing scripts where as they could be the most dominant type of cohesion of spoken discourse.

The main concern of this study was to identify Iranian intermediate EFL learners’ problems in cohesion and coherence of writing performance as well as the extent to which they utilized cohesion and coherence in their writing. It is important for EFL and ESL learners the ability to compose a piece of descriptive text. Despite its significance, there is a gap in the literature about how Iranian EFL learners write essays in this genre that this study intends to fill. The research design involved the utilization of mixed research method in addressing the research questions. The study addressed a corpus of 40 intermediate language learners’ descriptive essays, 10 experienced teachers that they were themselves at intermediate level as the questionnaire respondents and four interviewees’ answers from those volunteer experienced teachers. The results of the study revealed lack of cohesion and coherence in the participants’ essays and their writing performance in terms of these two variables was not acceptable. Therefore, the obtained findings, by implication, indicated that they had neither some aspects of cohesive and coherent writing, nor had enough support, practice and feedback on their written text in terms of cohesion and coherence. Some pedagogical implications of this study would be applicable to the language learners’ writing in terms of these two aforementioned variables as well as the results were expected to aid in setting the writing sections of classes for improvement of language learners’ written texts particularly in terms of cohesion and coherence.

Les deux notions fondamentales dans le domaine de la linguistique textuelle sont : la cohésion et la cohérence. Ces deux notions entrent à la fois dans la production du texte et dans son interprétation. Alors, comment s’organise un texte ? Quelles sont les règles de la cohérence textuelle ? Quelle différence y a-t-il entre la cohérence et la cohésion ? Comment mieux interpréter un texte à la lumière de ces règles ? Telles sont les questions qui seront débattues au cours de notre communication. Au fil de notre travail, nous allons nous référer à la conception de différents linguistes tels que : Michel Charolles, Jacques Fontanille, Lita Lundquist et Dominique Maingueneau. En effet, on peut dire que la cohérence est une condition textuelle qui nécessite des rapports logiques et non-contradictoires entre les différentes phrases du texte, elle se rattache principalement à la signification générale de la totalité du texte, selon Michel Charolles (cf. Introduction aux problèmes de la cohérence des textes, 1978), quatre règles régissent cette propriété du texte et qui sont : la règle de répétition, la règle de la progression de l’information, la règle de non-contradiction et la règle de relation. A son tour, La pédagogue danoise Lita Lundquist distingue entre trois niveaux de cohérence : un niveau thématique, un niveau sémantique et un niveau pragmatique. Dans cet article, nous essayerons de relier les trois niveaux de cohérence établis par Lita Lundquist avec les quatre principes de la cohérence établis par Michel Charolles pour mettre en place un modèle d’analyse textuelle qui pourrait nous faciliter l’interprétation et la réception d’un texte littéraire quel qu’il soit. En ce qui concerne la cohérence thématique, nous allons étudier les procédés de répétition ainsi que les trois types de progression. Pour ce qui est de la cohérence sémantique, nous allons parler de la méta-règle de non-contradiction chez Michel Charolles. Quant à la cohérence pragmatique, nous allons présenter sa quatrième règle de la cohérence à savoir : la règle de relation.

The non-linear order of revelations is often considered by many scholars to signify lack of coherence, disunity, and fragmentariness. It seems that 'coherence' and the related terms have veiled a significant linguistic feature of the Qur’an, namely, the non-linear nature of revelations, which might be used to make a distinction between ordinary and Quranic discourse. We will argue that to unveil the non-linearity, we should consider revelations in relation to God who reveals Himself in language not as an ordinary speaker whose speech is limited to a certain context, with a beginning and an end. We should not expect God to speak like a man. The Qur’an, thus, is seen here as a non-temporal, non-linear text that reflects its divine origin, by systematically destructing the spacio-temporal context and the linear order of language.

Despite the huge bulk of research conducted on translation quality assessment, the literature on the translation of the Holy Quran is in its infancy. Since jurists, commentators, and Quranic interpreters analyze individual Quranic verses as a whole discourse and in relation to other verses and Surahs, it is deemed necessary for translators to follow the same procedure and consider the wholeness of the text in their translation of individual verses. Coherence is among linguistic properties that contribute to the wholeness of the Quran as a unique discourse. A literature review shows that coherence has a direct effect on the quality of translations. Thus, this research intended to investigate the effect of coherence on the translation quality of some famous translations of the Holy Quran from an instructional viewpoint. To this aim, a mixed-methods study was employed in which the effect of coherence on reading comprehension of 12 Ph.D. candidates enrolled in an ESP course was studied. In the qualitative phase, utilizing linguistic markers, samples of coherent translations were extracted from the 30th chapter of the Quran. Then, two reading comprehension tests were developed from the coherent samples and the corpus without coherent markers. In the next step, these tests were administered to participants. The data were analyzed through a t-test. Findings showed that coherent translations enjoy post-posed/pre-posed concessive, sense continuity, backgrounding, explicitation, and addition as coherence markers. Also, quantitative findings showed a significant difference between the tests taken by the participants at two different times (t (11) = 4.204 and p = 0.001) proving the meaningful effect of coherence on translation comprehension.

In the Iranian economy, the oil sector has a significant position; So that changes in oil price affect various economic sectors and markets, including the stock market. The stock market is one of the principal financial markets that can potentially attract the country's uncontrolled savings and liquidity in the form of an efficient channel and improve economic growth and development by turning it into investment. Therefore, it is essential to examine the relationship between oil price and Iran's stock market returns. Given the importance of the issue, the purpose of this paper is to investigate the co-movement between OPEC oil price and returns of the Tehran Stock Exchange market. To analyze the relationship between two variables, applied the wavelet coherence approach and utilized daily data during the period of 2009-2021. Findings show there is a positive correlation between oil prices and stock market returns. Comparison of the data in annual time-frequency scale indicated that the oil price and stock market returns are in phase from 2009 to 2011, and is observed a positive relationship between them. From December 2011 to August 2015, both variables are in phase, and oil price is the leading factor in the stock market. During the period 2015 to 2021, both variables are in phase, but coherency between oil price and stock market returns is not observed.

The issue of literal versus free translation has always been a controversial matter in the translation of the Holy Scriptures, including the Holy Qurʼān. Explicitation, as a translation universal, has received increasing attention in the area of translating religious texts. The aim of this paper is to investigate the effects of explicitation on the translation of coherence in the first 13 surahs of Part (Juz) 30 of the Holy Qurʼān. In doing so, the model proposed by Vinay and Darbelnet (1995), along with coherence aspects in Sherman’s (2010) framework were used. To this end, the first 13 surahs of Part (Juz) 30 of the Holy Qurʼān in Arabic and their five English translations by Asad, Shakir, Pickthal, Yusufali and Saffarzadeh were examined. The overall goal of the analysis was to find whether explanatory coherence was used in the English translation and how explicitation affected the coherence of the content in all translations. Findings show that explicitation not only resolved ambiguity but also strengthened the coherence of the text. However, translators, in some translations, preferred to be loyal and faithful to the original and did not add anything to their translation. Additionally, in a few cases, the addition of more words to the translation turned it into redundant mess, leading to an incoherent translation.