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I read an English chapter in my school book and then as I was reading the stuff given after the chapter, I read this topic called 'Noticing discourse linkers and signallers' (I have attached the picture of the page I read).

I was able to understand what 'signallers' are but I was not able to even get a clue of what 'linkers' are. I did search it on the internet but I couldn't find a simple and understandable source. So, can anybody please explain this topic to me in as simple words and language as possible?

I will highly appreciate your efforts! :)

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  • It is a bit of relatively recent academic jargon describing how certain words and phrases help a discourse (conversation) cohere in the minds of the people having the discourse by referring back to previous chunks of that discourse. Signallers (or segues) indicate a change of topic. All human languages have such features; they are not limited to English.
    – TimR
    Commented Feb 20, 2018 at 12:15
  • Thanks, Tromano! Can you tell me one thing though, why have you referred them as jargon?
    – Rohit Shekhawat
    Commented Feb 21, 2018 at 7:38
  • Your explanation really helped me to understand the topic :)
    – Rohit Shekhawat
    Commented Feb 21, 2018 at 7:45
  • Sorry, unclear antecedent with "it"! discourse markers is jargon.
    – TimR
    Commented Feb 21, 2018 at 10:47
  • Why is it jargon? Are they newly induced in modern grammar?
    – Rohit Shekhawat
    Commented Feb 22, 2018 at 7:23

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As @Tᴚoɯɐuo indicated in the comments section of your question, discourse means conversation, therefore discourse linkers link conversations. They can be conjunctions in some respects, but in the sense of discourse/conversation linkers, they are normally phrases which link the conversations together.

Some examples were given in the text you provided in the image.

Talking about novels, ...

would be a discourse linker when the last thing being said was talking about novels.

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  • Ok, so what I understood is that Linkers are words or phrases that we use while talking, that denote the topic/thing we are talking about. Thanks, Chris, your explanation really helped :)
    – Rohit Shekhawat
    Commented Feb 21, 2018 at 7:43

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