Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 627):
That is, there are two primary anaphoric strategies for tracking a referent as a text unfolds. The speaker or writer can use either (i) a personal reference item (personal pronoun or possessive determiner) or (ii) a specified noun. A ‘specified noun’ is either an inherently specific one – a proper noun – or else a common noun (serving as Thing) modified by a demonstrative determiner as Deictic. For example: he vs. the Rabbit or his vs. the Rabbit’s (or of the Rabbit). The term ‘pronoun’ suggests that a pronoun stands for a noun; and the term ‘pronominalisation’ suggests that something is turned into a pronoun. But both terms are misleading: the unmarked anaphoric strategy is to use the pronoun, and the lexical variant or a proper name is used only if there is a good reason to vary from the unmarked strategy.
Good reasons include (i) the need to indicate the beginning of a new rhetorical stage in the unfolding text and (ii) the need to further elaborate the reference when there are alternative antecedents around in the discourse.
Blogger Comments:
[1] To be clear, cohesive reference is not concerned with "tracking referents". This error ultimately derives from Martin's (1992) misunderstanding of reference as 'participant identification', and especially its further elaboration in Martin & Rose (2007). For evidence that these are misunderstandings, see the clarifying critiques here (English Text) and here (Working With Discourse).
The textual function of reference is to create cohesion in the text by presuming information that is recoverable from elsewhere in the text itself. Speakers do not need to "keep track" of referents, since they already know who they are talking about, and if speakers wanted to "track" referents for listeners, there are far more efficient ways of doing so than deploying potentially ambiguous reference items.
[2] To be clear, it is only the determiner of a nominal group that serves as a reference item, forming a cohesive tie with its referent, and proper nouns do not serve as reference items. Proper nouns only 'reference' in the sense of ideational denotation (wording realising meaning). Martin's relabelling of reference (IDENTIFICATION) routinely confuses textual reference with ideational denotation (and DEIXIS); evidence here.
As previously suggested, serious scholars seeking a theoretically (and internally) consistent understanding of cohesive reference are strongly urged to consult the original model in Cohesion In English (Halliday & Hasan 1976), and/or either of the first two editions of An Introduction To Functional Grammar (Halliday 1985; 1994).