A STUDY OF COHESION AND COHERENCE IN FACEBOOK DISCOURSE

By

Bassey Garvey Ufot

&

Victoria Ime Japhet

Department of English

University of Uyo, Nigeria

Abstract

This research is a study of cohesion and coherence in social media discourse assembling its primary data from Facebook. The advent of ICT has become an integral part of everyday discourse in the modern world. Therefore, the ability of a single village of users from all over the world to communicate and understand one another without saying much lies in discourse analysis, particularly through cohesion and coherence. The data for this research is drawn from a random selection of five Facebook posts, two from a Facebook group known as ‘Tales of a Nigerian’ and three from personal Facebook accounts. This study reveals that Facebook users employ various cohesive devices and features of coherence to create meaningful and connected online discourse. The findings show the pattern in which reference and repetition as well as inference and logical ordering are used to connect what a user says in a sentence with what has already been said in previous sentences, and how comments are the referents of the entire post. This research, therefore, contributes to the understanding of cohesive links, shared experiences and the Nigerian situation, as tools for the creation and interpretation of online discourse.