This study proceeds from the qualitative description of the basic statistical characteristics of the texts in the corpus towards a more interpretive analysis, using mainly textual context in the interpretation of the findings. Again, as in Biber et al. (1991) linguistic features will be viewed as having “functional association” (41). That is, the focus is on what task a certain type of linguistic item fulfills in discourse, specifically what it can do or what it does in a particular text. This approach is particularly convenient in the study of expository writing, as out of the six major kinds of linguistic functions performed in discourse: “ideational, textual, personal, interpersonal, contextual and aesthetic” (as described in Biber et al., 1991, 41); the first two, ideational and textual, are the most prominent in academic writing. Performing ideational tasks simply means conveying some propositional information about referents identified by linguistic structures in a text. In addition, when this information is built into a coherent text, textual tasks are performed. These two main functions then contribute to the creation of cohesion between different parts of the text, which is the main focus of this research. Similarly, contextual tasks are achieved when reference to some aspect of the situation is shared by the discourse participants. However, this latter function is relevant in only a limited sense to written discourse. The remaining three functions, while relevant to the study of academic discourse, are not directly related to the topic of this chapter.