Coherence created lexically: cohesive devices in company annual reports

The paper explores the process in which coherence is achieved in the formal written genre of company annual reports. As explicitness, conciseness and unambiguity are fundamental qualities in such a discourse, the main emphasis is put on lexical cohesive devices, such as repetition and careful use of synonymy. The paper surveys the occurrence of principal cohesive devices in annual reports and in attached financial statements, reflecting their succinct and often fragmentary style, namely the use of articles, pronominal reference, substitution, synonyms and hyper-/hyponyms. It is claimed that rather lexical and syntactic devices contribute to the clarity of expression, compared with an obvious scarcity of logical connectors and other specialised discourse markers expressing sequence, emphasis, certainty, etc. Such preferences derive from the relatively less argumentative and more summative function of annual reports.