An SF-MDA of the Textual and the Logical Cohesive Devices in a Postgraduate Accounting Course

Abstract

The use of cohesive devices in academic discourse not only improves the quality of writing but also enhances our learning experiences. This study aims to explain how the multimodal accounting discourse is constructed by postgraduate business students through the cohesive ties. Halliday and Hasan’s and Halliday’s cohesion analysis schemes were employed in the systemic functional multimodal discourse analysis (SF-MDA) of the cohesive devices in the multimodal accounting texts. The schemes are based on systemic functional linguistics (SFL) which suits the context of this study as it considers language as a social semiotic resource for making meaning. Its linguistic tools are capable of explaining the way we construct and make meanings. The SF-MDA findings showed the first and most frequently occurring cohesive device type in the orthographic texts was lexical cohesion, in particular repetition of the same lexical items, followed by reference and conjunctions. Lexical cohesive devices were higher in the tables than in the orthographic texts. Conjunctions were only employed in the orthographic texts to signal extension and enhancement relationships. One of the key features that characterize financial statements is the abundance of implicit hierarchically networked lexical ties that bind the separate lexical strings, thereby organizing the discourse of financial statements. The results contribute to our understanding of the complex multimodal meaning-making processes in accounting discourse.