This is an important book on an important but neglected concept; it is original, scholarly and accessible and should be essential reading for anyone planning to talk about spoken or written discourse.

- Michael Hoey, University of Liverpool,

This book investigates 'topic' from a discourse analytic perspective. It makes a major contribution to our understanding of the ways in which topics are launched, developed and managed in spoken discourse. Importantly, Richard Watson Todd provides a comprehensive description of appropriate methodologies for investigating topic, an invaluable and much needed feature of the book. <i>Discourse Topics</i> will be an extremely useful resource for anyone interested in studying or researching this often overlooked aspect of discourse analysis.

- Steve Walsh, Newcastle University,

The volume is inspirational and makes a major contribution to the growing literature on discourse analysis. It will undoubtedly open up new perspectives for researchers who take an interest in discourse topics in discourse analysis, linguistics, psychology and natural language processing.

- Jixian Pang, Zhejiang University City College, In Discourse Studies 20(2), 2018,