The Function of Cohesive Ties in The Cohision of Nahj-ol-balagha Speeches

According to Halliday and Hasan (1976), to enjoy cohesiveness, a text requires the elements called cohesive ties which involve reference, substitution, ellipsis, and conjunction. Conjunctions represent a collection of linguistic elements which connect lexical items and sentences and include subsets as additive, adversative, causal and temporal. The image of the text without cohesive ties is almost impossible. Nahj-ol-balagha as a religious and literary text, enjoys these elements and the function of the conjunctive elements therein is based on a particular style. Adhering to a descriptive-statistical design, the present article investigates the frequencies and functions of the cohesive ties in 30 speeches presented in Nahj-ol-balagha. This is done in order to obtain a reliable interpretation of the functions of these ties in Nahj-ol-balagha based on the plethora of data collected.
One of the important results obtained is the corroboration of the high frequency of the conjunctions in the cited speeches especially regarding the additive devices and the low frequency of the adversative ties as well as the functions of these devices in accordance with short-term and long-term devices and their various functions in cohision of Nahj-ol-balagha.