Abstract
This thesis combines systemic-functional linguistics, stylistics and narrative theory in a study of cohesion, style, narrative technique and visual elements in Jonathan Safran Foer’s novel Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close (2005). The novel makes use of images and visual elements as well as conventional verbal text. The aim of the study is to show what it is that helps the reader make sense of the meanings that emerge through the use of different narrators and different modes of expression in the novel. There are three narrators, and although their narratives may be seen as self-contained, I posit that patterns of reference, lexical cohesion and parallels tie their narratives together to make a unified whole. The study indicates that while the traditional understanding of cohesion deals with grammatical or lexical links between lexical items or chunks of discourse, we may also understand cohesion as a connection between the semantic meaning of non-verbal elements and the accompanying verbal text.