An inquiry into the communicative competence for text production. A schema for the different steps a speaker has to take in planning an utterance (a text) is presented. The focus is on the 'communicative manoeuvers', i.e. strategies organizing and structuring the propositions chosen to be expressed, in such a way that a coherent text that is appropriate to the speaker's goals and the context, results. Some texts taken from natural conversations are analyzed in terms of these 'cognitive manoeuvres', and in terms of their thematic progression.