Abstract

The aim of the paper is to propose that Topics are a particular kind of indirect reports, and to describe some essential features which characterize them as such. It is organized as follows. Section 1: Topics are linguistic material devoid of illocutionary force, providing semantic starting points for the understanding of the Focus. Typically, this information is already active in the participants’ working memory, due to previous introduction. Section 2: this qualifies Topics as a specific kind of IRs, namely implicit IRs, because they do not need to contain any predicate of saying. Differently from belief reports, Topics are implicit reports whose nature is induced by addressees following a pragmatic, not a semantic/logical path. Section 3: Topics are IRs de re, not de dicto. Section 4: Topics as such leave the nature and position of the source quite vague, though obviously specifiable by the context. Section 5: Topics can either cancel or express the illocution of the original utterance. Section 6: Topics are really IRs, not just processed reports. Section 7: the implicitness of Topics as IRs has some special consequences concerning the reliability of the presented source and the separation between the different contents to be attributed to the source and to the reporter. This has effects on the possible use of Topics for manipulative effects.