Analysis Of Thomas L. Friedman's 'Third Intifada'

The present study shall deal practically with the concept of cohesion –lexical and grammatical- within the following articles: “The Third Intifada” written by Thomas L. Friedman, Published in New York Times and “Failing to understand Palestine” written by Ramzy Baroud , extracted from, a non-native newspaper, Al-Ahram Weekly, for the purpose of analyzing the influential effects of the applied cohesive devices separately on such texts as well as their impact on the language of a written discourse in general. In addition to, proving how far cohesion contributes in achieving texture with meaningful message to the mentioned articles with further considerations to the writers’ prevailing choice of semantic and syntactic devices.
According to Halliday
“Palestinian people/ society/ identity/ generations” are widely repeated along the text which lays emphasis on the writer’s sympathy with the Palestinian case as a whole. The writer used direct repetition to link ideas with each other in his use of words like ‘popular uprising’, ‘Intifada’, ‘history’, ‘Oslo’, ‘live ammunition’, ‘revolts’, ‘suicide bombings’ and ‘victims’. Violence is used four times to demonstrate Israelis strategy in Palestine all the time as evident in also the reiterated word ‘kill’ that found 6 times in total . Also, repetition is mainly applied in the key names such as ‘Palestine’, ‘Israel’, ‘B’Tselem’, ‘west bank’, ‘Gaza’, ‘Jerusalem’ and ‘ Friedman’ to tie sentences to each other as well as the main ideas of the
For instance, ‘Intifada’ and ‘uprising’ in the 3rd paragraph, ‘Outcome’ in the 1st paragraph and ‘results’ in paragraph 13, ‘contradictions’ in the 2nd paragraph and ‘inconsistency’ in paragraph 5, ‘ruinous’ in the 4th paragraph and ‘devastating’ in paragraph 7, ‘crush’ in the 4th paragraph and ‘breakdown’ in paragraph 5, ‘elitist’ in paragraph 4 and ‘supercilious’ in the 9th one. Furthermore, the writer applies a few number of synonyms to avoid the repetition of words simultaneously as evident in words like: ‘diverse’ and ‘various’, ‘constitute’ and ‘establish’, ‘path’ and ‘way’, ‘separated’ and ‘divided’, ‘narrative’ and ‘history’, and finally ‘incidents’ and ‘events’. Writers in general apply different word with the same meaning in an attempt to avoid tedious repetition and to assert their point of view through drawing the readers’ attention to specific beliefs.
Antonyms are two words that are opposite to each other in their meaning. They’re applied for different reasons in both articles. In the first one, Friedman’s use of antonyms lays emphasis on his antagonism to anti-Israel views as evident in his analysis to the Palestinian Intifadas. For instance, “Israel side” as opposed to the “Palestinian side” in the first paragraph, ‘secure’ in paragraph 7 and ‘insecure’ in the same paragraph, last line, ‘fail’ in the 3rd paragraph and ‘success’ in paragraph 10 and ‘legal’ in paragraph 5 and ‘illegal’ in the 9th