ABSTRACT
In the last chapter, we were primarily concerned with the global coherence of a text. Global coherence is essentially a cognitive perspective where the goal is to identify a macrosemantic interpretation of a text. In van Dijk's (1985) terms, global coherence presupposes the existence of a general structure that is related to ideas such as topic, theme, gist, or goal of discourse. It concentrates on what is most central or prominent about a discourse and acts as an overall executive manager of language, acts, and sequences. Local organization, on the other hand, is concerned with the pragmatic relations among actual components of a text. At its rawest level, a text is an unbroken string of expressions—words, phrases, and speech acts. Local coherence is “from below” or “bottom up” and focuses on how meanings in a text are linked up to form and contribute to more general and complex meanings.
