An Analysis of Cohesion and Coherence in a Ghazal by Hafez from a Systemic Functional Linguistics Viewpoint

Some literary critics have often engaged in debates on the degree of overall cohesion and coherence across the couplets of the Hafez ghazals: some maintain that the Hafez’s ghazals lack coherence; some others believe that there is cohesion and coherence in the nature of the couplets. This paper presents an analysis of the overall coherence in a ghazal of Hafez- that has a weak cohesion apparently- by using a linguistics framework laid out by Halliday and Hasan (1976 & 1984). Based on this theory, although cohesion is an important property of a text, just finding the cohesive elements does not show that the text is coherent. Rather, after finding these elements, it is necessary to show coherence in a text based on Cohesive Harmony. After doing this analysis, we have found that this ghazal has a very high cohesion and coherence. So, by utilizing this theory - that is a scientific method- we can probe the degree of cohesion and coherence in any ghazal of Hafez or other literary texts quantitatively.