Topic as a Discourse Notion: a Study of Topic in the Conversations of Children and Adults( )

Topic has been described as a discourse notion (see, for example, Chafe 1972 ; Li and Thompson, this volume). However, there has been no systematic study in linguistics of the way in which topics are initiated, sustained, and/or dropped in naturally-occurring discourse. This paper addresses itself to this concern. It draws from notions developed by sociologists engaged in conversational analysis and integrates them with our own observations of the conversations of children and adults. Our observations include non-verbal as well as verbal contexts in which topics are entertained by interlocutors. On the basis of this record, the prerequisite steps for getting a topic into the discourse are characterized and a notion of discourse topic is defined.