We might, for instance, conclude that such an approach is potentially ‘productive’ because there are significant semiotic features of the topic which have not been sufficiently attended to in existing social research. A topic might attract our interest because it has been prominent in the relevant academic literature, or is a focus of practical attention in the domain or field at issue (in political debate or debates over questions of management or ‘leadership’, in media commentary and so forth). Topics are often ‘given’, and they sometimes virtually select themselves – who could doubt for instance that ‘immigration’, ‘terrorism’, ‘globalization’ or ‘security’ are important contemporary topics, with significant implications for human well – being, which researchers should attend to? Selecting such topics has the advantage of ensuring that research is relevant to the issues, problems and wrongs of the day, but also the danger that their very obviousness can lead us to take them too much at face value. We cannot assume that such topics are coherent research objects; to ‘translate’ topics into objects, we need to theorize them.