The volume presents a selection of papers delivered to the IADA Colloquium held in Lyon in September 2004 on the topic of “Confiding/ Self-disclosure in Interaction”. The objective is to describe a particular type of discursive activity by comparing its various fictional representations (in the first part) with its realisations in authentic interactions (second part). These two sections are preceded by an introduction which locates the general framework of the investigation, and the volume concludes with a final section containing three studies taking an 'intergeneric' or 'transgeneric' overview of the activity of selfdisclosure.