Stylistic Study of Cohesion in Relation to Narrative Techniques in Religious Discourse

Cohesion is well known as the study of the relationships, whether grammatical and/or lexical, between the different elements of a particular text by the use of what are commonly called 'cohesive devices'. These devices bring connectivity and bind a text together. Besides, the nature and the amount of such cohesive devices usually affect the understanding of that text in the sense of making it easier to comprehend. The present study is intended to examine the use of grammatical cohesive devices in relation to narrative techniques. The story of Joseph from the Holy Quran has been selected to be examined by using Halliday and Hasan's Model of Cohesion (1976, 1989). The aim of the study is to comparatively examine to what extent the types of grammatical cohesive devices and their frequencies and densities are affected by the techniques of narration, namely, internal and external or as commonly known as conversational and narrative. The researcher has come into the conclusion that the grammatical cohesive devices form one third of the story and accordingly, they affect the structure and interpretation of the text. Moreover, the grammatical cohesive devices are more frequent in the conversational part when compared to the narrative part. It is also concluded that the endophoric reference is the dominant category in the conversational and narrative parts of the story, unlike the exophoric that can be identified only in relation to the background knowledge of the outside situation.


Introduction
Cohesion is considered as a type of relationship that holds between parts of a text, usually expressed by specific markers. In this regard, Renkema (1993) states that a text can get its connectivity by cohesion and there are some relations that all languages have which, in one way or another, help in the formation of that unity. One of such relations is that of cohesion which makes the transition from one sentence to another smooth and flexible. In this way, the reader, or listener, can proceed with the flow of ideas and get the 'thread of discourse' spontaneously. Crystal (1980, p.67) defines cohesion as a "major concept, referring to the property of units larger than the morpheme to bind together in a construction of an utterance or text, which links different parts of sentences, or larger units of discourse". This definition is similar to that of Brown and Yule (1983, p.24) who define cohesion as "the view of the relationships between sentences in a printed text." As such, cohesive ties exist between elements in the connected sentences of a text in such a way that one word or phrase is linked to other words or phrases. Halliday and Hasan's concept of cohesion was further examined by Enkvist (1985) who stated that cohesion is a 'cuing system' or an 'overt link on the textual surface that enables the reader to see the semantic integrity of a text. Anaphoric pronouns, according to Enkvist (1985), are probably the most overt markers of cohesive relationships. Quirk, Greenbaum, Leech andSvartvik (1985, p.1423) point out that "cohesion is the formal linguistic realization of semantic and pragmatic relations between clauses and sentences in a text". As for Hoey (1991, p.3), he defines cohesion as "the way certain words or grammatical features of a sentence can connect that sentence to its predecessors (and successors) in a text". Besides, the term 'cohesion' has been highly used in the fields of discourse analysis, stylistics and grammar based on that concept introduced in Halliday and Hasan's model (1976).

Halliday and Hasan's Model of Cohesion
Scholars and linguists in the field of language studies proposed many models for analyzing cohesive devices. One of such models is that of Halliday and Hasan's outlined in their work 'Cohesion in English' (1976). Their model has proved to be comprehensive and as such, was used in numerous studies including ESL (English as a Second Language), native oral discourse and composition, genre constraints on cohesive ties selectivity, reading comprehension, nonnative academic discourse, and literary analysis (and by extension religious books). This can be attributed to the explicitness and comprehensiveness of the taxonomy, which enabled researchers to apply the aspects that best suit their research purposes. According to Halliday and Hasan (1976), cohesion may be dealt with fewer than five basic headings: reference, substitution, ellipsis, conjunction and lexical cohesion. The classification of the 'cohesive items' is primarily based on the linguistic form, and the categories should be considered within the lexico-grammatical system. Besides, the function of cohesion is based on the idea of relating one part of a text to another within the same text. On the whole, it provides smoothness and continuity to the text. By providing this, cohesion enables language users to supply all the components of the picture for its explication. In other words, cohesion includes the 'grammatical formatting' of phrases, clauses, and sentences that bring connectivity to the text (Halliday & Hasan 1976, p. 19).
To Halliday and Hasan, cohesion constitutes a presupposition of something that has gone before in the discourse, whether this thing is in the immediately preceding sentence or not. Crystal (2008, p. 85) asserts that "cohesion is a major concept referring to the surface structural features of an utterance, or text, that link different parts of sentences or large unites of discourse together". In Halliday and Hasan's (1976) framework, cohesion may be dealt with fewer than five basic headings: reference, substitution, ellipsis, lexical cohesion and conjunction.
Reference, substitution and ellipsis are considered grammatical in that they involve systems of person, number, proximity and degree of comparison. Lexical cohesion refers to the "selection of a lexical item that is in some way related to one occurring previously" (Halliday & Hasan, 1976, p. 303), and finally, conjunction "is on the borderline of the grammatical and the lexical", where some elements can be interpreted grammatically while other conjunctive expressions involve lexical choices. For Halliday & Hasan (2001, p. 2), "whether a set of sentences do or do not constitute a text depends on the cohesive relationships within and between the sentences", and this creates what is called 'texture'. According to them "a text has texture and this is what distinguishes it from something that is not a text".
The cohesive relationships within a text are set up to provide texture and this justifies the fact that "the interpretation of some elements in the discourse is dependent on that of another". Halliday andHasan (1976, 1989) have provided us with a comprehensive taxonomy of five main cohesive devices which are reference, substitution, ellipsis, conjunction, and lexical cohesion. These devices comprise 'cohesive ties' which bind a text together and create texture. In the following sections, the researcher will attempt to give a very brief sketch the categories of cohesion, proposed by Halliday and Hasan, taking into consideration that the present study is limited in its application to the grammatical categories only. It is hoped that the following descriptions of these categories of cohesion will provide a broader framework into which these categories may be put. Below, table (1) summarizes all the principal categories suggested by Halliday and Hasan (1976):

Grammatical Cohesive Devices
This section is intended to elaborate on the cohesive devices within the grammatical category. Such devices are introduced in structures and patterns that can be stated in different ways. The real value of such devices lies in the fact that they are used first to reduce and second to simplify the text as much as possible to make more economic and comprehensible.

Reference
Reference is defined as "the relation between an element of the text and something else by reference to which it is interpreted in the given stance" (Halliday & Hasan, 1976, p. 308). Cutting (2002, p. 70) on the other hand defines reference as "an act of using language to refer to the entity in the context of situation". As such, a reference is a linguistic form used by the language user to identify something. To Khaleel and Khalaf (2016), reference refers to the use of language for the sake of pointing to something. Moreover, language can be used by anyone to refer to a person, thing, or place in a direct or indirect way; directly when we call a person by his name straightforward and indirectly when we use a pronoun, for instance, to refer to the same person.
References are basically classified into two types: endophoric textual references (from the surrounding text) and exophoric situational references (from the context of situation). To achieve this, there should be a 'presupposition' to be satisfied, i.e., the thing referred to is to be identified somewhere in the sentence. This means that when the interpretation is found in the text, the result is 'endophoric reference' and when the interpretation lies outside the text, in the context of situation, the result is 'exophoric reference' (Halliday & Hasan, 1976).
The endophoric references usually form the 'cohesive devices' within a text. According to Cutting (2002, p. 9), endophoric references can be divided into 'anaphoric' and 'cataphoric'. Anaphoric references refer to nouns or noun phrases that link back the nouns to the references in the preceding text while cataphoric references refer to the nouns or noun phrases that link forward the nouns to the references in the text that follows. For example: -Have you heard about Jackie? He's back home. (He refers back to Jackie, so it is anaphoric reference) -She's coming soon, the secretary. (She refers forward to the secretary, so it is cataphoric) -Exophoric situational reference This term is usually used to directly refer to the extra linguistic situation accompanying an utterance. In other words, it is a term that looks to the situation outside the text in which text occurs for the identity of the item being referred to (Paltridge, 2006;Crystal, 2008). To Halliday and Hasan (1976), exophoric reference is context-dependent. This means that a reference must be made to the context of situation and this in turn leads to the creation of a text where language is linked with context of situation. Hoey (1991, p. 71) states that "in the personal pronoun system, only 'he, she, it, they' could refer out of the into the real world". In the same way, Tehrani and Yeganeh (1999, p. 74) state that "the first and second person pronouns are most usually exophoric, their exophoric reference is straightforward: 'I' means the addresser, 'you' the addressee".
-Endophoric textual reference This type of reference may function cohesively in such a way that connects two parts of a text together, i.e., one part of a text is linked with another as its antecedent (Halliday 1976;Richards & Schmidt 2010). According to this type of reference, all the information needed for the explication of the text is available in the text itself. Besides, endophoric reference can be either anaphoric or cataphoric.

Personal reference
The category of person in this section is used to describe the two classes of personal pronouns: possessive determiners and possessive pronouns. A personal reference is recognized through the first, second and third person. All three are related to the number of categories of 'singular and plural'. Personal pronouns are known to refer to person, gender, number and grammatical relation. Halliday and Hasan (1976, p. 50) state that the context of situation in narration contains a 'context of reference'. Personal pronouns which usually refer to other roles include 'he', 'she', 'it' and 'they'. What applies to personal pronouns applies to possessive determiners and possessive pronouns.
2. Demonstrative reference It refers to a class of items with the function of pointing to an entity in the context of situation (Crystal, 2008). When it is followed by a noun, it is called a 'demonstrative adjective' as in 'This car is mine' and when it stands alone it is called 'demonstrative pronoun' as in 'This is my car'. It is also defined as a word (pronoun or determiner) that refers to something lying in the immediate environment or distant from the speaker. Demonstratives can be classified into two classes: the grammatical class of adverbs and the pronouns or determiners. The adverbials are classified into spatial and temporal such as 'here', 'there, 'now' and 'then'.

Comparative references
According to Halliday (1985), comparative references provide cohesive relationships between the comparative items, and their antecedents. This is done by depending on such items as 'like' or 'unlike', 'same' or 'different', 'more' or 'less', equal' or unequal'. Besides, comparative references are divided into two types, namely, general comparison and particular comparison. General comparison includes identity (same, equal, identical, identically), similarity (such, similar, so similarity, likewise) and difference (other, different, else, differently, otherwise). Particular comparison includes enumerative (more, fewer, less further additional, so -as-equally+quantifier, e.g. so many) and epithet comparative adjectives & adverbs (equally good). In other words, general comparison can be considered as a comparison in terms of 'likeness' and 'unlikeness, while particular comparison means a comparison in terms of quality or quantity and expressed by means of adjectives and adverbs in the same comparative form (Halliday & Hasan, 1976, pp. 76-77)

Substitution
Substitution can be explained as the replacement, in the process of analyzing a language, of one unit or sequence of units by another. It is a presupposition at the level of words and structures in that When a substitute is used, it signals that the actual item required, the particular word or clause is recoverable from the environment, and the substitute preserves the class of the presupposed item, which may therefore be replaced in the slot created by it. (Halliday & Hasan, 1976, p. 145) It is worth saying that there is a distinction between substitution and reference. While substitution stands for a relation between linguistic items, whether words or phrases, reference is a relation that exists between meanings. Since substitution is not a semantic relation, it has no connection with specifying a particular referent. Halliday and Hasan (1976, pp. 91-104) classify substitution into three main grammatical categories, namely, nominal (one, ones, same), verbal (do), and clausal (So, neither, nor). One more point is that reference "can reach back a long way in the text and extend over a long passage, whereas substitution is limited to the immediately preceding clause" (Halliday, 1985, p. 302). Halliday and Hasan (1976) emphasize the idea that ellipsis 'is a presupposition at the level of words and structures'. Substitution and ellipsis are thought to be very similar in the sense that ellipsis can be thought of as a 'substitution by zero' while substitution may be thought of as a kind of 'explicit ellipsis'. They differ; however, in that ellipsis is 'something left unsaid' taking into account that when it is unsaid does not imply that it is not understood, however, for quite the opposite is true. Ellipsis also means "an intentional omission of a word or phrase from a text simply because the omitted text has already been referred to earlier and it is not necessary" (Halliday & Hasan, 1976, p. 147). In this regard and according to Kennedy (2003) and Harmer (2004), ellipsis involves a deliberate deletion of some words and phrases. Yet, this does not affect the clarity of meaning since such a type of deletion creates a cohesive tie that cements the texture and creates a text (Huneety, Mashaqba, Al-Shboul, and Alshdaifat, 2017). Since it is a grammatical relation; it can be divided into three types, namely, nominal, verbal and clausal. Nominal ellipsis means "ellipsis within the nominal group and the omitted noun phrase is a word which can function as a modifier. The modifier can be joined with another structure" (Halliday & Hasan, 1976, pp. 147-148). Verbal ellipsis is defined as ellipsis taking place within the verbal group and it is classified into two types: lexical ellipsis and operator ellipsis. Lexical ellipsis means the omission of the lexical verb while the operator ellipsis is done by the omission of the operator and the subject in this case is always omitted from the clause and it can be presupposed (Halliday & Hasan, 1976;Beaugrande & Dressler, 1981;Chirtiansen, 2015). As for the last type of ellipsis, clausal, it refers to the omission of part of the clause or all of it. It is associated with statements, questions, responses in dialogues and so on. Cristiansen (2015, p. 154) mentions two types of clausal ellipsis. In the first type, a whole clause can be omitted leaving individual elements like subjects, objects, complements. This can be clearly found in answers to both 'wh-questions' and 'yes-no questions'. In the second type, a whole clause is expected to be omitted.

Conjunctions
Conjunctions as grammatical cohesive devices are discussed under many names including but not limited to links, connectors, discourse markers or logical connectives (Abdul Zahra & Abbas, 2004). According to Halliday and Hasan, conjunctions constitute the last type of cohesive devices and the most obvious device in a text. They are rather different from other types of cohesive devices in that they do not refer to other linguistic items. They signal the idea that "what is to follow is systematically connected to what has gone before" (1976, p. 227). Although conjunctive relations are cohesive, Halliday and Hasan do not consider them cohesive in themselves. They state that conjunctive elements are cohesive not in themselves but indirectly, by virtue of their specific meanings; they are not primarily devices for reaching out into the preceding (or following) text, but they express certain meanings which presuppose the presence of other components in the discourse (p.226). Whether conjunctions within sentences are considered as cohesive or not is still a controversial issue among scholars and linguists. This is due to the view point among some linguists that conjunction is a relation between sentences rather than within sentences (see Halliday & Hasan, 2001, p. 232). This means that subordinators are not considered a type of conjunction. For example, Halliday and Hasan (1976, p. 228) do not consider after a conjunction in the following example: -After they had fought the battle, it snowed. This is because it subordinates one part of the sentence to another but does not directly establish a link with another sentence. The following example, on the other hand, shows afterwards as a conjunction due to the link between the two sentences: -They fought a battle. Afterwards, it snowed. In this regard, Halliday and Hasan come up with a scheme of four categories where they group conjunctions into 'additive', 'adversative', 'causal', and 'temporal'. Additive conjunction means the semantic addition of propositions while the adversative conjunction refers to the semantic relation that is 'contrary to expectation'. Causal conjunction, on the other hand, means the relation of cause and the temporal refers to the relation of time. These four categories of conjunctions are further classified into four groups: simple, complex, apposition, and comparison (Halliday & Hasan, 1976, p. 250). Some examples of each of such groups are listed in the table below:

Methodology
This study is qualitative and quantitative in that a story from the Holy Quran has been selected and analyzed by identifying the grammatical cohesive devices discussed in the previous sections so as to meet and achieve the aim of the study which is "to comparatively examine to what extent the types of grammatical cohesive devices and their frequencies and densities in a selected text from the Holy Quran are affected by the techniques of narration, namely, internal and external or as commonly known as conversational and narrative sides of the story". To carry out the present study, the researcher will follow the steps below: 1. Reading carefully the translated copy of the Holy Quran. 2. Choosing the story of Joseph to be thoroughly analyzed.
3. Identifying the four grammatical cohesive devices found and their ties. 4. Identifying the density of the devices in the story. 5. Studying the devices in relation to the sentences whether they are narrative or conversational. 6. Tabulating and then discussing the results of the analysis by comparing between the density of the grammatical cohesive devices in both types, narrative and conversational. 7. Drawing conclusions and suggesting some pedagogical recommendations.
The density here stands for the ratio of the frequency of each grammatical cohesive device to the total number of words in the selected religious text. Besides, the association between the grammatical cohesive device and the technique of narration in the story will be studied so as to find out if there is any relation and why.

Techniques of narration
It is quite evident that narrators are important and without them stories couldn't be told. Yet, when it comes to storytelling, point of view is what matters since it is the narrator who provides us with the story details. As such, the technique of narration is one of the most crucial elements of writing a narrative, i.e., a short story or a novel. Moreover, choosing a narrator is based on how the writer wants his story to be told, and in what way the audience is meant to receive it. Therefore, whatever we understand about a story, for instance, is based on the technique of narration, and that is why it is of great importance.
A very important point that should be taken into account is whether the writing is meant to be subjective or objective, i.e., whether the writing is done according to a third person viewpoint or a first person viewpoint. Sometimes, in the process of writing a story, for instance, it is not that easy to be objective. In this regard, once the writer begins to write from an objective point of view, for the best of his writing, he should remain like that for the rest of the story. On the whole, the narrative is either objective, subjective or both, i.e., a mix of the two. The best and the most interesting is the one which comprises both techniques. Objective Narrative: In this technique, the narrator is no more than an observer, observing from the outside without being able to get into the character's mind except in a speculative way. The narrator in this type of narration is bound by both the 'chronology' and 'immediacy' of the story, similar to a reporter reporting events immediately from the scene without being part of it. Subjective Narrative: In this technique, the narrator, who is known as omniscient, knows everything about the story from a single character, or even characters, and he speculates the events of the story, including the setting, through the eyes of such characters. In other words, and through this technique, the narrator knows everything about every single character through being a fully omniscient narrator. Subjective narration is meant to step into the minds of the characters through them the writer enables his readers to know everything about the setting and the objects around them. That is why subjective narrators are able to give closer and minute insights into the setting. At the same time, narrators are accused of being biased due to their deep descriptions concerning the characters (Napolin, 2010).

Analysis and discussion
In this section the researcher will present the analysis of the religious text, i.e., the Story of Joseph, so as to see how the grammatical cohesive devices are used in both conversational and narrative parts of the story to provide texture and to create relationships within a text. Looking at the table below, we get to know that there are some cohesive devices that are abundantly used all over the story and some others have not been even used.  Conjunctions come second with a general account of (267) distributed into (165) in the conversational part and (102) in the narrative. The main categories of this type of cohesive devices are additives which score first with (136) ties (92 for the conversational and 44 narrative), 35 adversatives (23 conversational and 12 narrative), 60 causal (32 conversational and 28 narrative) and temporal (18 conversational and 18 narrative) as summarized in table 5 below: The third cohesive device identified in the story is substitution. In this type, only nominal is identified (5 conversational and 1 narrative), unlike the verbal clausal for which no examples have been identified. As for ellipsis, only one example has been identified which is that of verbal.
An important point to highlight is that Halliday and Hasan (1976) and Khaleel and Khalaf (2016) classify the techniques of narration into internal and external. The technique of narration in the story of Joseph, like some other stories in the Holy Quran, is external in the sense that the narrator 'Who' is Almighty Allah and He is narrating the story without being involved as a character; unlike the internal where the narrator is involved in the story as one of the characters. Yet, Almighty Allah sometimes reveals Himself in the narrative part of the story as 'We' and sometimes is revealed by reportees or the characters as 'He' when they refer to their Creator.
The second point concerning the story under study is that it is mostly composed of the conversational part where the narrator directly reports the story of Joseph starting from his seeing the vision until the family union, i.e., the conversational part directly tells the story from the beginning till the end. It constitutes about two third of the whole story. This has been measured through the word account done by the researcher. The total number of words of the whole story is (3824); the conversational part forms (2642) words whereas the narrative reporting part (1182) words. The same applies when it comes to the examination of the grammatical cohesive devices. The word account tells that the total number of such devices is (1285); among which (832) which is about (31.49%) in the conversational part and (453) which is about (38.32 %) in the narrative part.
As the calculations make it clear, the reference grammatical cohesive devices are denser in relation to other types of grammatical cohesive devices due to their being mainly used to refer to the different characters in the stories. Both narrative and conversational parts comprise three categories, namely, personal pronouns, possessive determiners and possessive pronouns. There are ( Now some examples from the story in relation to the above points will be examined. The story starts in verse (4) when Almighty Allah directly reports Joseph for the first time: -Oh my father! I saw eleven stars … I saw them prostrate themselves to me. Here the 'I' is a singular masculine/feminine pronominal reference functioning as nonpossessive anaphoric that refers back to Joseph; the same applies to the objective reference 'me' and the possessive determiner 'my' with the head 'father'. The objective plural personal pronoun 'them' and the reflexive 'themselves' anaphorically refer back to the eleven stars, i.e., Joseph's brothers. Besides, the story contains more than one referent for 'I' depending on whom Almighty Allah is reporting. The following example, verse (13), makes this point clear: -Really it saddens me that you should take him away: I fear lest the wolf should devour him while you do not attend to him. The pronominal singular personal pronoun 'I' here anaphrically refers to Jacob who is also referred to in the same verse with the use of the singular objective pronoun 'me'. The objective nominal pronoun 'him' is used three times to refer to the same referent 'Joseph'. The empty pronominal reference 'it' refers back to verse (18) while 'you' as a pronoun refers anaphorically to Joseph's brothers. In another example, the 'I' refers to the Aziz's wife as in verse (51): -Now the truth manifest (to all): it was I who sought to seduce him from his (true) self: he is indeed of those who are (ever) true and virtuous. The empty subjective pronoun 'it' and the plural demonstrative determiner 'those' refer cataphorically to 'I'and 'who are true and virtuous', respectively. Then in verse (54), Almighty Allah reports: -Bring him to me: I will take him especially to serve about my own person. 'Him' refers anahporically to Joseph. The objective pronoun 'me', the subjective 'I' and the possessive determiner 'my', all refer to the same referent, i.e., the Aziz and they are all endophoric.
In (69) the narrator tells us in the narrative and conversational parts together something about Joseph and his brothers: -Now when they came into Joseph's presence, he perceived his (full) brother to stay with him. He said to him: "Behold! I am your (own) brother; so do not grieve at anything of their doings". Almighty Allah starts the verse with the deictic 'Now' referring to 'when' as a subordinator that cataphorically introduces the coming of the brothers. The pronominal singular masculine 'he' refers back to Joseph. The adjectival personal reference 'his' also refers to Joseph, while 'him' in both instances refers to the brother, the pronominal singular personal reference 'I' and the adjectival possessive pronoun 'you' in the direct quotation (conversational part of the text) refer back to Joseph. The plural adjectival possessive pronoun 'their' refers anaphorically to Joseph's brothers.
In verse (21), Almighty Allah voices Himself clearly when He plainly refers to Himself using 'We' in the narrative part when He sates: -The man in Egypt who bought him, said to his wife: "Make his stay (among us) honorable: maybe he will bring us much good, or we shall adopt him as a son." Thus, 'We' established Joseph in the Land; there 'We' might teach him the interpretation of stories (and events). And Allah has full power and control over His affairs; but most among mankind do not know it.
In the above lines, Almighty Allah uses the plural pronominal reference 'We' twice to refer cataphorically to 'Himself' followed by 'Allah'. The narrative part in this instance starts with the definite article 'The', which is equated with the demonstrative determiner 'that', which functions cataphorically as it refers forwards to the 'man who brought him. The objective personal reference 'him' refers anaphorically to Joseph as a referent in addition to the singular possessive determiner 'his', singular subjective pronoun 'he', and the objective reference 'him'.
Then, Almighty Allah continues in verse (22): -… We gave him power and knowledge: thus do We reward those who do right. by referring twice to Himself as 'We' in two separate phrases connected with the additive positive cohesive device 'thus'. The adjectival demonstrative 'those' is followed by the relative clause starting with 'who'. Another occurrence of the pronominal plural 'We' in the narrative part of the story lies in verse (56) when Almighty Allah states: -Thus We gave established power to Joseph in the land, to take possession therein as, when, or where he pleased. We bestow of Our mercy on whom We please, and We suffer not, to be lost, the reward of those who do good.
In response to Joseph's request in (55), the narrator uses the causal conjunction 'thus' followed by the pronominal plural reference 'We' which is used 4 times in this extract, i.e., verse (56). One more time, a relative clause is used after the demonstrative determiner 'those' to refer cataphorically to the following relative clause.
Moreover, Almighty Allah as a referent is found in verse (67) when Jacob addresses his sons saying: -None can command except Allah: on Him do I put my trust: and let all that trust put their trust on Him. The pronominal singular personal reference 'I' and the possessive determiner 'my' refer to Jacob and 'Him' as a singular objective reference refers to the narrator of the story, i.e., Almighty Allah, on Whom they put 'their' trust and 'their' here refers back anaphorically to the brothers. In (101) Joseph directly addresses his creator saying: -O my Lord! You have indeed bestowed on me some power, and taught me something of the interpretation of dreams and events, -O You Creator of the heavens and the earth! You are my Protector in this world and in the Hereafter. You take my soul (at death) as one submitting to Your will (as a Muslim), and unite me with the righteous. The singular second person pronominal reference 'You' is used three times and the referent is the same. As for the personal references in the objective case 'me', they refer back to Joseph and this is known from the textual context, i.e., the preceding extracts. The adjectival possessive pronoun 'my' also refers back to Joseph.
In reply to "Do you know how you dealt with Joseph and his brothers…", the brothers reply in verse (90): -They said: "Are you indeed Joseph? He said "I am Joseph, and this is my brother: Allah has indeed been gracious to us (all): be hold, he that is righteous and patient…" The pronominal subjective reference 'you' refers cataphorically to Joseph and the same applies to the singular pronominal pronoun 'I'. The singular demonstrative pronoun 'This' also cataphorically refers to the possessive determiner 'my', which itself anaphorically refers to Joseph. The objective plural pronoun 'us' refers back to both Joseph and his brother. The narrator of the story, Almighty Allah, does not take part in the conversation. He is just reporting to us the story; yet, there are many instances where He is mentioned and reported by the reportees themselves in the conversational part. In other words, since it is a religious story, Joseph and his father, Jacob, refer to Almighty Allah when they report some incidents.

Conclusion
Grammatical cohesive devices are important not only in relating elements within a sentence or sentences within a text, but also in the process of interpreting that text. Such devices have been used to stylistically examine one of the stories of the Holy Quran, namely, that of Joseph or as commonly known as Yousif. The examination of the story and the illustrative tables presented in the previous section show to what extent the grammatical cohesive devices affect the technique of narration, i.e., how it is processed by the narrator, Almighty Allah, in both conversational and narrative parts. It has been concluded that the grammatical cohesive devices form one third of the total number of words in the story and accordingly, they affect the structure and interpretation of the text. One more point, it has been noticed that the number of grammatical cohesive ties is seen to increase in the conversational part and to decrease in the narrative part. Reference is denser in that it forms about 40.17% of the total number of cohesive devices in the conversational part with 12.68% in the narrative part. Conjunctions come second as they score 10.58% in both conversational and narrative parts. Finally, it is concluded that the endophoric reference is the dominant category in the conversational and narrative parts of the story, unlike the exophoric that can be identified only in relation to the background knowledge of the outside situation.