The authors present an overview of recent research conducted in the field of language production based on papers presented at the first edition of the International Workshop on Language Production (Marseille, France, September 2004). This article comprises two main parts. In the first part, consisting of three sections, the authors review the articles that are included in this Special Issue. These three sections deal with three different topics of general interest for models of language production: (A) the general organisational principles of the language production system, (B) several aspects of the lexical selection process and (C) the representations and processes used during syntactic encoding. In the second part, the authors discuss future directions for research in the field of language production, given the considerable developments that have occurred in recent years. [The organisation of the workshop and the writing of this article were made possible by financial support from the following institutions: Ville de Marseille, Conseil General des Bouches du Rhone, Institut Federatif de Recherche 131: Sciences du Cerveau et de la Cognition, Universite' de Provence (BQR grant Bonus Qualite Recherche).]