Bridging Reference: Confusing Reference With Lexical Cohesion

Martin & Rose (2007: 171-2):

To this point, the resources we’ve looked at refer directly to the participant they identify. Less commonly, participants can be presumed indirectly. To illustrate we can use some examples from other stories in Tutu’s book:

Tshikalanga stabbed first.., and he couldn't get the knife out of the chest of Mxenge [96]

In this story the identity of the knife is presumed even though it hasn’t been directly introduced before; but it has been indirectly introduced, since the most likely thing for someone to stab with is a knife.

Similarly with the plastic in the following example; it hasn’t been directly mentioned, but plastic bags are obviously made of plastic, and so its ‘presence’ is obvious:

they started to take a plastic bag ... then one person held both my hands down and the other person put it on my head. Then they seated it so that I wouldn't be able to breathe and kept it on for at least two minutes, by which time the plastic was clinging to my eyelids [105]

This kind of inferred anaphoric reference is called bridging. Helena uses this kind of reference to presume the bed from her second love’s sleeping habits in the following extract:

Instead of resting at night, he would wander from window to window. He tried to hide his wild consuming fear, but I saw it.
In the early hours of the morning between two and half-past-two, I jolt awake from his rushed breathing.
Rolls this way, that side of the bed.

Blogger Comments:

[1] To be clear, here Martin & Rose confuse lexical cohesion with reference. On the one hand, a relation of collocation obtains between stab(bed) and knife, and this is textually cohesive. On the other hand, the demonstrative reference of the in the knife is homophoric —'self-specifying; there is only one – or at least only one that makes sense in the context' (Halliday & Matthiessen 2014: 631) — which is exophoric, and therefore not textually cohesive.

[2] To be clear, referents are not restricted to participants, as the author's own exposition has demonstrated. The demonstrative reference item the in the plastic refers directly to the Classifier plastic in the nominal group a plastic bag (which plastic? the plastic of a plastic bag). Again, this is accompanied by lexical cohesion: the repetition of the lexical item plastic.

[3] To be clear, here again Martin & Rose confuse lexical cohesion with reference. On the one hand, a relation of collocation obtains between rest and bed, and this is textually cohesive. On the other hand, the demonstrative reference of the in the bed is homophoric — there is only one that makes sense in the context — which is exophoric, and therefore not textually cohesive.