Discourse topic organisation: signalling macro-topic boundaries

Abstract

In discourse analysis, the notion of topic has proved to be an extremely useful tool as a central organising principle for discourse. The aim of this paper is to investigate structural markers used by English speakers in effecting a change of topic, and more specifically, an opening or closing of a macro topic. In our taxonomy of discourse topic organisation applying to English conversation, Markers are signals used to mark a boundary in the discourse topic, without an explicit reference to or inclusion of the topic. They include words and phrases largely devoid of referential content like well, now, I see, yes, etc. which may occur in differente combinations or clusterings or with other segmentation devices such as pauses, endorsements and repetitions.