The paper presents a design strategy for e-learning hypermedia interfaces based on the notion of conceptual-navigational map. It proposes to analyze the cognitive and communication problems that arise in the use of hypermedia applications with specific goals, such as e-learning courseware modules, with the linguistic tools of pragmatics and discourse analysis, and shows how this can help in identifying specific communication problems related to the grounding and contextualization of new information, and how it can lead to new insights for design and to interfaces inspired by the linguistic means used in verbal communication to manage analogous problems. The implementation of such a design strategy in the SWISSLING courseware modules is discussed, and future directions of development towards context- aware adaptive hypermedia are briefly outlined.