discourserelevant

Discourserelevant is a term used to describe content that bears directly on the subject, issue, or question under discussion in a conversation or text. It denotes material that advances the discourse, as opposed to off-topic material, digressions, or paraphrase that does not contribute to understanding or progression of the topic.

In discourse analysis, the label is used to annotate utterances, propositions, or segments that help establish coherence, support argumentation, or resolve a query. Discourserelevant elements include evidence, claims, definitions, and procedural statements that are necessary to understand or move the discourse forward. The term can be applied to both spoken and written discourse and is sensitive to context, including goals, participants, and genre.

In practical use, discourserelevant content is often identified by its relation to a discourse goal, such as answering a question, supporting a claim, or clarifying a concept. In natural language processing, classifiers may be trained to recognize discourserelevant sentences to improve summarization, question answering, or dialogue management. However, determinations of relevance are inherently contextual and can vary with audience expectations and discourse structure.

Notes: The word is a compound formation of discourse and relevant; it is not a universal dictionary entry in all varieties of English, but it appears in academic writing and some computational linguistics literature.