Each unit of language generally has a form that governs the whole. This piece of writing is a web page, a piece of instruction in expository prose. Just a minute ago, I was interrupted by a telephone conversation, a special form of speaking dependent on the technology and governed by certain expectations of form and content. The study of the meaning of language is the province of semantics. The individual phoneme in a given language can have a broad or narrow array of feelings or tones associated with it.
Morphemes are the most elementary units of language with lexical potential.
Words obviously fill the dictionary with denotations and connotations. The discourse unit spreads an array of expectations and experiences which accumulate to a dynamic force.