Discourse Markers in Climate Change Reports by the Greater London Authority

Abstract

London, the capital of the United Kingdom (the UK), and other major cities in the world experience a range of climate change-related phenomena that impact negatively on people’s quotidian lives [1]. Among them, we should mention a dramatic change in weather patterns [2], heatwaves [3], excessive rainfall [4], sea level rise [5], and flooding [6]. The current Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, and the Greater London Authority (the GLA) are acutely aware of the negative consequences of climate change [7]. Accordingly, they develop, implement and communicate measures that are aimed at mitigating the negative impact of climate change on London and Londoners [7]. Particularly, the GLA communicates its climate change-related activities in specialised reports. The GLA’s climate change reports, however, attract limited attention of linguists and philologists [8]. In order to compensate for the shortage of relevant literature, the present study examines a corpus of climate change reports by the GLA and analyses metadiscursive means in them. Specifically, the study investigates the frequency of such metadiscursive means as discourse markers (DMs) in the corpus. The quantitative investigation of the corpus demonstrates that the DMs and, as, however, but, and if occur frequently. The frequency of their occurrence and their roles in the GLA’s climate change communication are further discussed in the article.