Inspired by TSDI, various branch models have sprouted -- the micro discourse information structure model and interactive model (Du, 2012), the interactive cognitive model of implicit persuasion (Du, 2008), DICMP (discourse-information-centric model of persuasion ) (Xu, 2011), information frame model (Chen, 2011), SAINFO (speech act information) model (Li, 2013), information bridges model (Zhao, 2011), information appraisal model of translation (Du, 2013), ect.

       In addition to offering theoretical infrastructure, DIT has been widely applied in the study of courtroom interaction, legislation, legal English teaching, legal translation and interpretation, and experiments in forensic linguistics, ect.. It is worthwhile mentioning that DIT began to show its potential in the analysis of psychological issues in legal language, authorship identification and speaker identification in legal area, etc..

Besides, DIT can be utilized to solve various practical problems in language analysis such as appraisal of writing ability, evaluation of visual and audio effects, appraisal of translation quality, seizing suspicious information from internet, intelligent information comprehension, transcription of visual materials, pictorial description, and the cutting and compiling of teaching videos, etc..

Even in artificial intelligence field, DIT can shed some light on some projects including the identification of discourse modes, the generation of formatted text, semantic analysis and generation of texts, etc. with the advantage of avoiding being over-involved in surface properties and bringing the related researches to discourse level.