Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society

Researchers investigating discourse coherence typically examine the various mechanisms that bring about coherence. This body of research has acknowledged that the specific coherence relations which unite the individual discourse units work as a result of an assumption about the coherence of discourse in general. The standard approach to coherence investigation has been to analyze conventional texts and conversations in which both coherence relations and the assumption of coherence are present. By limiting themselves to the analysis of standard discourse, researchers have ignored nonstandard sources, which can provide insight into the necessity and sufficiency of these mechanisms. This paper provides several examples of nonstandard discourse. From these examples, we conclude that an assumption of coherence is the only necessary and sufficient mechanism required for judgments of coherence.