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Discourse labels are anaphoric noun phrases with an abstract head noun which encapsulate the meaning of a previous or subsequent discourse segment. This cohesive device has received many names in the literature, which generally correspond to slightly different conceptions of the phenomenon. The aim of this paper is to identify the features that distinguish discourse labels from the rest of referential cohesive devices, specially, from superordinates, which share some of its semantic features. In order to do this, the main contributions from the literature are examined and confronted with the analysis of examples from a corpus of newspaper editorials. The analysis leads to a proposal to extend the classification of referential cohesive devices, which takes into account not only reiteration but also encapsulation devices and considers discourse labeling as an independent and distinct cohesive function. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]