ABSTRACT
This chapter helps the reader to better understand what topic management is. In a first step, the literature about topic in French language is reviewed. Moreover, also the literature on anaphora and reference in conversation is added, in order to introduce the phenomenon under investigation. The attention then narrows down specifically to topic introduction and topic closure in conversation. Particular attention is paid to the conversational mechanisms that allow the interactants to collaboratively manage topic in conversation. A comparison between studies on topic introduction and topic closure is also drawn at the end of the chapter.
