Grammatical Cohesion Devices and the Construction of Textual Coherence in Cross-Disciplinary Academic Journal Articles: A Halliday and Hasan Perspective

Abstract

Although grammatical cohesion has been studied extensively as a marker of textual connectivity, comparatively little research has examined when the presence of a cohesive device actually supports coherent interpretation, particularly in student academic writing that spans multiple disciplines. This study investigates how grammatical cohesion contributes to textual coherence in 26 cross-disciplinary student journal articles published in the Unnes Scientific Journal, applying Halliday and Hasan's (1976) framework of reference, substitution, ellipsis, and conjunction through a qualitative interpretive design supported by hybrid thematic analysis. Because the corpus spans eleven academic disciplines, it provides a naturalistic basis for distinguishing cohesive practices that are general to academic writing from those shaped by disciplinary convention. Cohesive devices were coded for their textual form and then interpreted for their contribution to referential continuity, logical relationships, topic development, and evidence–claim connections. Reference and conjunction were the dominant resources, while substitution and ellipsis occurred more sparingly, reflecting a preference for explicitness. However, the presence of a cohesive device did not guarantee coherence: ambiguous references, weak transitions, incomplete logical connections, redundant repetition, and abrupt topic shifts recurred across disciplines, most often when a device was used without a sufficiently clear or contextually appropriate relationship. These findings show that cohesion and coherence, although related, are distinct dimensions of textual organization, and that cohesive devices support coherence only when they establish relationships that readers can reliably interpret. By extending Halliday and Hasan's framework beyond the identification of linguistic devices toward the functional and contextual conditions of coherence, the study offers academic writing instructors a more precise basis for teaching students not merely to use cohesive devices, but to use them appropriately for their disciplinary context.