discourse analysis
in linguistics, the study of structures that extend beyond the single sentence, such as conversations, narratives, or written arguments. Discourse analysis is particularly concerned with the ways in which a sequence of two or more sentences can produce meanings that are different from or additional to any found in the sentences considered separately. An important source of such meanings is the “frame” or format of the discourse (news item, fairytale, joke, etc.) and a recognition of the various norms that this implies. The norms and expectations that govern conversation are a major concern of discourse analysis, as is the structure of conversational language generally. Particular areas of interest here include the distinction between background and foreground information (see foregrounding; given–new distinction) and the relations between explicit and inferred meanings (see conversational inference; implicature;
presupposition).