Main lexical and grammatical cohesive devices in English for specific purposes discourses

Abstract

This paper examines the main lexical and grammatical cohesive devices of English for Specific Purposes discourses from Systemic Functional Linguistics perspective. The study is based on a corpus of 18 discourses from 14 English for Specific Purposes books and textbooks published by 4 prestigious publishers and employs the descriptive, statistical method, using theories proposed by Halliday and other systemicists. The research results reveal that repetitions and lexical collocations are the two main sources of lexical cohesive devices and references and conjunctions are the two most significant types of grammatical cohesive devices in these discourses. Some suggestions for teachers and learners are also given to enhance the quality of teaching and learning English for Specific Purposes subjects at universities, colleges and educational institutions in Vietnam.