A text can be said to be coherent when each successive sentence can be assigned wholly and without difficulty to one of the relationships… (Sinclair, Hoey, and Fox, 1993: 19). The relationships among the ideas in the paragraph might be a major reason in achieving coherence. Because of this, the ideas of the paragraph must be presented in a whole text. If the points or ideas lied in a paragraph can be analyzed and identified clearly by the reader, the coherence was achieved.
According to Van Dijk (1997: 9) coherence is how the meaning of sentences in a discourse hung together. Besides that, he distinguished coherence in micro dan in macro level analysis. In micro analysis, coherence occurs from the structure of discourse. While in macro analysis, the term coherence develops into topics or themes of discourse. Van Dijk (1997: 10) says, “Discourse topics (which are not the same as sentence topics) are so to speak the global meanings of discourse, of which they define the overall (macro) coherence.”
In general, coherence is the grammatical and semantic interconnectedness between sentences that form a text (Bussmann, 1998: 198). Moreover, Bussmann (1998: 198) also defines coherence into narrower meaning that coherence is separate from grammatical cohesion and specifically signifies the semantic meaning and the cohesion of the basic interconnection of the meanings of the text, its content/semantic and cognitive structure.
Because of that, Mulyana (2005: 36) says, “…kohesi dan koherensi sebenarnya hampir sama. Bahkan, beberapa penanda aspek kohesi juga merupakan penanda koherensi. Demikian pula sebaliknya. Jadi, terdapat hal-hal yang tumpang-tindih di antara kedua aspek wacana tersebut. Meski demikian, bukan berarti keduanya tidak bisa dibedakan.”
Djajasudarma (2006: 44) states that cohesion is a process or aspect in creating coherent discourse. It concludes that cohesion and coherence are closely related and support each other. Furthermore, Djajasudarma (2006: 44) describes that cohesion refers to linkage of forms, while coherence refers to linkage of meaning. The fundamental difference between them is that cohesion is syntactical aspect and coherence is semantically aspect.
The ideas that lied in the paragraph can be achieved because they are organized regularly and also have relationships among sentences. D’Angelo (in HG Taringan, 1987: 105 in Mulyana, 2005: 31) asserts that there are some techniques to achieve coherence in a paragraph, they are; repetition of key words of phrases, transitions, pronoun reference.
The details of the three types of coherence have explained in the grammatical and lexical cohesion devise. In coherence theory, the three types are accepted as semantic items. Here are some examples of application from repetition of key words of phrases, transitions, pronoun reference in text.
1. Repetition
Coherency of a discourse can be made by repeating key words (Keraf, 1984: 76-77). The repetition of key words or phrases means that any words or phrases that are very important to the main idea in a paragraph or text are repeated by the producer (writer). It could be described in the example bellow:
Globalization era has changed people in the world. Globalization era brought positive and negative effect. A group of people found new invention. Some countries tried to improve their power in military, economic, business, or politics to be number one. On the contrary, globalization era brought damages on the morality of the people in the world.
2. Transition
One way to achieve coherence is through the use of transition signal. They make the movement between sentences in paragraph smooth (Oshima and Hogue, 1997: 100). Transitions are considered as special vocabulary words that spread out of the paragraph or text. This transition describes that it brings from one idea to another. Transition word distinguishes into sentence connectors and subordinate and coordinate conjunctions. Devices of transition signal are also explained in grammatical cohesion theory. For example:
Today is my worst day. I was failed in my first interview. First, I come late and there are three interviewers waiting for me. Then, I forget to bring my proposal. I was panic. Last, they want me to leave the room.
3. Pronoun Reference
Another way to achieve coherence in writing is trough the writer’s consistent choice of such elements as person (I, he, she, it, they, you, one), voice (active or passive), and register (formal or informal) (Oshima and Hogue, 1997: 108). The pronouns are also classified in grammatical cohesion theory. To use pronoun reference means to mention a word or phrase in form of pronoun. For example:
Student who know a few Latin and Greek roots and prefixes have an advantage over students who don’t know them. They can often guess the meaning of unfamiliar words. If, for example, they know that the prefix circum- means “around,” they can guess the meaning of words such circumference, circumvent, circumstance, and circumnavigate when they read them is a sentence.
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