Article published in:
Lexical Cohesion and Corpus LinguisticsEdited by John Flowerdew and Michaela Mahlberg
[International Journal of Corpus Linguistics 11:3] 2006
► pp. 363–383
Lexical cohesion
Corpus linguistic theory and its application in English language teaching
Michaela Mahlberg | University of Liverpool
Cohesion is generally described with regard to two broad categories: ‘grammatical cohesion’ and ‘lexical cohesion’. These categories reflect a view on language that treats grammar and lexis along separate lines. Language teaching textbooks on cohesion often follow this division. In contrast, a corpus theoretical approach to the description of English prioritises lexis and does not assume that lexical and grammatical phenomena can be clearly distinguished. Consequently, cohesion can be seen in a new light: cohesion is created by interlocking lexico-grammatical patterns and overlapping lexical items. A corpus theoretical approach to cohesion has important implications for English language teaching. The article looks at difficulties of teaching cohesion, shows links between communicative approaches to ELT and corpus linguistics, and suggests practical applications of corpus theoretical concepts.
Keywords: collocation, lexical item, semantic prosody, communicative approaches, lexical cohesion
Available under the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) 3.0 license.
For any use beyond this license, please contact the publisher at rights@benjamins.nl.
Published online: 30 August 2006
https://doi.org/10.1075/ijcl.11.3.08mah
https://doi.org/10.1075/ijcl.11.3.08mah
Full-text
Cited by
Cited by other publications
Brookes, Gavin & Tony McEnery
Gray, Bethany
Gray, Bethany & Viviana Cortes
Gómez González, María de los Ángeles
Lorenzo, Francisco & Leticia Rodríguez
Mastropierro, Lorenzo & Michaela Mahlberg
O’Kelly, Ciarán
Schanding, Brian & Hye K. Pae
Zhao, Chunhong
This list is based on CrossRef data as of 30 december 2020. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.