Culture, Language and Environmental Rights: The Anthropocentrism of English
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Valentina Adami
Valentina Adami is Adjunct Professor of English language at the University of Verona and of English literature at the University of Padova. She holds a PhD in English Studies from the University of Verona and is a member of AIDEL (Associazione Italiana di Diritto e Letteratura), ASLCH (Association for the Study of Law, Culture and the Humanities), AIA (Associazione Italiana di Anglistica) and ESSE (European Society for the Study of English). Her fields of research are trauma studies; law, language and literature; bioethics, medicine and literature; ecolinguistics and ecocriticism. Among her publications:Trauma Studies and Literature: Martin Amis's Time's Arrow (Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 2008);Bioethics through Literature: Margaret Atwood's Cautionary Tales (Trier: WVT, 2011).
Abstract
Through the methodological perspective of ecolinguistics, this paper criticizes the unecological and anthropocentric features of English in order to reveal the manipulation forces at work within language and create awareness of the relationship between language and the environment. Through examples from United Nations documents, the author underlines how the unecological ideologies entrenched in the structures of English influence cultural and legal approaches to environmental rights, which are always seen from a “human rights” perspective rather than from a “nature rights” perspective.
About the author
Valentina Adami is Adjunct Professor of English language at the University of Verona and of English literature at the University of Padova. She holds a PhD in English Studies from the University of Verona and is a member of AIDEL (Associazione Italiana di Diritto e Letteratura), ASLCH (Association for the Study of Law, Culture and the Humanities), AIA (Associazione Italiana di Anglistica) and ESSE (European Society for the Study of English). Her fields of research are trauma studies; law, language and literature; bioethics, medicine and literature; ecolinguistics and ecocriticism. Among her publications: Trauma Studies and Literature: Martin Amis's Time's Arrow (Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 2008); Bioethics through Literature: Margaret Atwood's Cautionary Tales (Trier: WVT, 2011).
©[2013] by Walter de Gruyter Berlin Boston
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- Focus: Genealogies of Laws and Justices
- Modifying the Past: Nietzschean Approaches to History
- Weeds in the Gardens of Justice? The Survival of Hyperpositivism in Polish Legal Culture as a Symptom/Sinthome
- Metamorphosis of the Ideals and the Actuals: Blasphemy Laws in Pakistan and the Transplantation of Justice in British India
- The Churchyard in Wilkie Collins's The Woman in White: Issues of Madness and Illegitimacy
- The Gothic Picturesque Garden and the Historical Sense
- Sovereignty, Faith and the Fall
- Sovereignty Forever: The Boundaries of Western Medieval and Modern Thought in a Quasi-Symptomatic Reading of Schmitt's Definition of Sovereignty
- Gollum's Sacredness and the Geopolitics of the Self: Reframing Tolkien's Normative World
- Culture, Language and Environmental Rights: The Anthropocentrism of English
- Finding The Guilty One: Media Sensationalism, Defendant's Performance, and Jury Equity
- Book Review
- Book Review
- Book Review
Articles in the same Issue
- Masthead
- Focus: Genealogies of Laws and Justices
- Modifying the Past: Nietzschean Approaches to History
- Weeds in the Gardens of Justice? The Survival of Hyperpositivism in Polish Legal Culture as a Symptom/Sinthome
- Metamorphosis of the Ideals and the Actuals: Blasphemy Laws in Pakistan and the Transplantation of Justice in British India
- The Churchyard in Wilkie Collins's The Woman in White: Issues of Madness and Illegitimacy
- The Gothic Picturesque Garden and the Historical Sense
- Sovereignty, Faith and the Fall
- Sovereignty Forever: The Boundaries of Western Medieval and Modern Thought in a Quasi-Symptomatic Reading of Schmitt's Definition of Sovereignty
- Gollum's Sacredness and the Geopolitics of the Self: Reframing Tolkien's Normative World
- Culture, Language and Environmental Rights: The Anthropocentrism of English
- Finding The Guilty One: Media Sensationalism, Defendant's Performance, and Jury Equity
- Book Review
- Book Review
- Book Review
