COHESIVE TIES IN ENGLISH ONLINE TRAVEL NEWS OF THE BANGKOK POST, THAILAND

Abstract

This study investigates the use of cohesive ties in English online travel news published by The Bangkok Post, Thailand, focusing on their structural and functional roles in enhancing textual cohesion. Based on the framework proposed by Halliday and Hasan (1976), the findings reveal that grammatical and lexical cohesion play crucial roles. The comparative analyses of the types, frequencies, and dominant cohesive ties employed in headlines and body texts of online travel news were also applied. In headlines, lexical cohesion, particularly collocation (20 instances) and reiteration (13 instances), dominates, while grammatical cohesion is less frequent but includes additive conjunctions, ellipsis, and substitution. In body texts, grammatical cohesion is the primary feature, with additive conjunctions (200 instances) as the most frequent type, alongside references, ellipses, and substitutions. Lexical cohesion in body texts prominently features collocation (33 instances) and reiteration (58 instances). Additionally, the study highlights the grammatical features in the structure of headlines and body texts such as tenses and relative pronouns. Headlines predominantly utilize the present simple tense (8 instances) with limited use of the present participle (1 instance). In contrast, body texts exhibit higher frequencies of present participles (45 instances), past participles (43 instances), and relative pronouns (10 instances), contributing to their descriptive and explanatory nature.