A Comparative Study of the Local/GlobalCoherence of Causality in ENSs’ and KELs’ Argumentative Essays

Abstract

Causal relations are fundamental to all kinds of cognitive activities including producing a coherent discourse. Drawing on the hypothesis that people’s use of causal devices in a language directly reflects their way of reasoning in their mind, and that native speakers have better command of linguistic devices (such as causal devices) in their native language than non-native speakers, this study aims to compare two sets of causal devices, identified in two language groups, ENSs and KELs, and show in what distinctive manner each group makes a coherent argument. Altenberg’s (1984) typology of causal devices was adjusted accordingly to accommodate two levels of coherence, local and global. This study, after all, demonstrated that the way KELs employ causal devices is deviant in comparison with the way ENSs do, and revealed that each group imposes a specific type of coherence on its own argument. This study thus benefits Korean learners of English who are having difficulty in learning the varied textual functions of English causal devices and their relation with two levels of coherence.