linguistics Linguistics is the scientific study of human language. It is called a scientific study because it entails a comprehensive, systematic, objective, and precise analysis of all aspects of language, particularly its nature and structure. Linguis ...

and discourse analysis, semantic macrostructures are the overall, global meanings of discourse, usually also described in terms of ''topic'', ''gist'', or ''upshot''. These semantic macrostructures (global meanings or topics) are typically expressed in for instance the headlines and lead of a news report, or the title and the abstract of a scholarly article. Macrostructures of discourse are distinguished from its microstructures, that is, the local structures of words, clauses, sentences or turns in conversation. Macrostructures may be derived from microstructures by operations such as abstracting, that is, leaving out or summarizing specific details. Semantic macrostructures or topics define what is called the global

coherence Coherence, coherency, or coherent may refer to the following: Physics * Coherence (physics), an ideal property of waves that enables stationary (i.e. temporally and spatially constant) interference * Coherence (units of measurement), a deriv ...

of discourse. This concept was first proposed by

Teun A. van Dijk Teun Adrianus van Dijk (born May 7, 1943, in Naaldwijk, German-occcupied Netherlands) is a scholar in the fields of text linguistics, discourse analysis and Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA). With Walter Kintsch he contributed to the development ...

in 1977. Macrostructure is an important concept in the Construction-Integration (CI) model detailed by

Walter Kintsch Walter Kintsch (born 1932) is an American Professor Emeritus of Psychology at the University of Colorado Boulder (United States). He is renowned for his groundbreaking theories in cognitive psychology, especially in relation to text comprehension. ...

in his landmark tome, ''Comprehension: A Paradigm for Cognition''.

References

Discourse analysis {{sociolinguistics-stub