Article · Wikipedia archive · Last revised Jul 13, 2026

Discourse topic

A discourse topic is the central participant or idea of a stretch of connected discourse or dialogue. The topic is what the discourse is about. The notion is often confused with the related notion of sentence-level topic/theme, which is frequently defined as "what the sentence is about". Discourse topics have been of considerable interest to linguists because of the relations between the topic of a discourse and various aspects of the grammatical structure of the sentence, including strategies for referent-tracking, topic-chaining, and pronominalization.

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Jul 13, 2026
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A discourse topic is the central participant or idea of a stretch of connected discourse or dialogue. The topic is what the discourse is about. The notion is often confused with the related notion of sentence-level topic/theme, which is frequently defined as "what the sentence is about".1 Discourse topics have been of considerable interest to linguists because of the relations between the topic of a discourse and various aspects of the grammatical structure of the sentence, including strategies for referent-tracking (including the use of voice,2 inversion,3 switch-reference markers, and obviation), topic-chaining, and pronominalization.

References

References

  1. Sapir, Edward. 1921. Language: An Introduction to the Study of Speech New York: Harcourt, Brace.
  2. Givón, Talmy (Ed.) (1994), Voice and Inversion. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
  3. Zúñiga, Fernando (2006) Deixis and Alignment. Inverse systems in indigenous languages of the Americas. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.