CONJUNCTIONS AS COHESIVE FEATURES OF PROBLEM STATEMENT SECTION IN DOCTORAL DISSERTATIONS ENGLISH STUDIES IN MALAYSIAN UNIVERSITY

Abstract

Abstract: As the most significant part of a doctoral dissertation, the Problem statement (henceforth PS) aims to convince the advisory committee and examiners about the importance of a topic under investigation. To convey intended meaning, PS requires explicit and unambiguous connections between the various parts of the problem statement by using cohesive markers. One of the cohesive devices is conjunctions. Undoubtedly, the existence of conjunctions in PS writing at the tertiary level helps maintain the flow of ideas within written texts. Thus, conjunctions play a vital role in the clarity of any written academic discourse by student writers. This study aims to investigate the conjunctions and their different types as cohesive devices and their role in the cohesion of PS writing. For this purpose, the current study used 60 doctoral dissertation problem statements published during 2010-2022 from English discipline via Hallidayan Systemic Functional Grammar (Halliday, 1994; Halliday & Matthiessen, 2004). This study employed the discourse analysis method, using a descriptive interpretive approach. TagAnt 2.0.5 software application was used to examine the occurrences and frequency of conjunctions in the PSs of doctoral dissertations. Overall, the results suggest that conjunctive adverbs are a crucial device in problem statement writing in the present work. The PS writers indeed employ different types of conjunctive adverbs such as additive, causal, adversative, and temporal to support the cohesive structure of the Problem Statement. However, the findings indicate that PS writers have a limited number of linguistic devices in their repertoire to show cohesion in their writing. In terms of frequency, the highest number of those employed belongs to the groups of additive connectors. It proves that the addition of information or variation of information for appropriate argumentation to support the claims and the establishment of connections is the most important in Problem Statement writing. In addition, the findings of the present research have implications for PS writers and supervisors to produce cohesive PS. Writers need to be aware of how the conjunctions as cohesive devices contribute to the development of their PS texts.