Grammatical and Lexical Cohesion in Charlie Chaplin's "The Great Dictator" Speech: A Quantitative Content Analysis

Abstract

This quantitative content analysis examines grammatical and lexical cohesion in Charlie Chaplin's final speech from The Great Dictator (1940), applying Halliday and Hasan's (1976) framework. Analysis of the 1,200-word transcript reveals reference (78.82%, n=67) as the dominant grammatical device, followed by repetition (67.30%, n=35) in lexical cohesion. Personal pronouns ("I," "we," "you") create intimacy and solidarity, while lexical reiteration ("men," "greed") builds rhetorical urgency. Findings offer EFL pedagogical insights for teaching discourse cohesion in multicultural Indonesian classrooms.