Macrosegments are trans-sentence components of texts which consist of both notional and surface components. Notional coherence in texts is achieved by the writer through choices made about words, sentences and paragraphs, including the structure of the writing conveyed by orthographic and syntactic features. Notional coherence is contained in, but transcends, the merely orthographic, syntactic and structural features of the transcript. Put another way, the macrosegments containing a conference's ideas and themes are not bounded by the limits of the text, including sentences and paragraphs, though they are constructed from them. While notional meaning transcends textual structures, those structures should not be ignored.
Skillful writers provide structural and syntactic clues to help readers accurately get the point.
Structural elements of text help form and convey the notional relationships of the argument, and good readers are therefore alert to them. Obviously, the transaction between a writer and a reader is complex, involving both parties. The concept of the discourse topic recognizes the mutual participation of both parties in textual communication. Our ongoing research is exploring how these structural features might be used, perhaps in combination with the TAT analysis of message content, to illuminate important internal patterns of interaction in the transcript. The TAT is the method of analysis .