Discourse analysis

Exophoric reference
References to the “shared world” outside discourse are called exophoric references.
Outward, or exophoric reference often directs us to the immediate context, as when
someone says 'leave it on the table please' about a parcel you have for them.
Sometimes, the referent is not in the immediate context but is assumed by the
speaker/writer to be part of a shared world, either in terms of knowledge or experience.
The same sort of exophoric reference is seen in phrases such as the Pope, the army
etc.
Exophoric reference (especially in the press) is often to a 'world of discourse' connected with the discourse of the moment, but not directly. British popular newspaper headlines sometimes make references such as 'That dress. Queen scolds Princess Di'. Here the reader is assumed to have followed certain stories in the press, and the reference is like a long-range anaphoric one, to a text separated in time and space from the present. Native speakers often have difficulties with such references even if they have only been away from the papers and radio or television for a week or two; the foreign learner may experience even greater disorientation.
Exophoric reference directs the receiver 'out of' the text and into an assumed shared world. This idea of a shared world overlaps with the idea of a shared world built up by sender and receiver as any discourse unfolds, and for this reason, some linguists see no real distinction between ana­phoric and exophoric reference (e.g. Brown and Yule 1983: 201), since both proceed on the basis of an assumption by the sender that the receiver is, at any point in time, availed of all the knowledge necessary to decode any reference items. But for practical purposes the distinction may be a useful one to retain as it enables us to evaluate to what extent any discourse is self-contained, supplying its referents internally, or to what extent it depends heavily on external, culture-specific real-world referents.