‘Just remember this’: Lexicogrammatical relevance markers in lectures.

This paper presents a comprehensive overview of lexicogrammatical devices which highlight
important or relevant points in lectures. Despite the established usefulness of discourse
organizational cues for lecture comprehension and note-taking, very little is
known about the marking of relevance in this genre. The current overview of lexicogrammatical
relevance markers combines a qualitative and quantitative investigation of 160 lectures
from the British Academic Spoken English (BASE) corpus. These markers could mostly
be classified according to their main element into adjective, noun, verb and adverb patterns.
Verb patterns were the most common, followed by noun patterns. The verb pattern
V clause (e.g., remember slavery had already been legally abolished) and the noun pattern MN
v-link (e.g., the point is) are the predominant types of relevance markers. The discrepancy
between the prevalent markers and what may be thought of as prototypical or included in
EAP textbooks as relevance markers also demonstrates the need for corpus linguistic
research. Implications for EAP course design, teaching English for lecturing purposes, and
educational research are discussed.