Volume 10, Issue 2 - Special Issue: Language and ecology in social imaginaries: ecolinguistic perspectives; Guest Editor: Douglas Mark Ponton

This article presents an ecolinguistic framework for analysing advertising and applies it to a wide range of TV advertisements for Coca-Cola. This particular product was selected because of well-publicised criticisms of its impact on health and the environment. The framework classifies advertisements into one of five types: classic-type, identity-type, narrative-type , cause-type, and counter-type , with many advertisements being hybrids of more than one type. The analysis uses multimodal discourse analysis to reveal underlying messages behind the advertisements, and judges these according to an ecosophy based on the World Health Organisation’s concept of One Health . The aim of the analysis is to reveal linguistic and multimodal features that are used to persuade people to purchase products which potentially harm both the consumer and the environment. The results can be practically applied in critical language awareness materials that can promote healthier and more environmentally beneficial purchasing.

In the modern period, tourism is one of the most important global industries. It often appears to guarantee contact with nature, claims to protect habitats and respect principles of ecological sustainability. This paper explores Sicilian tourism and its representation in publicitary material from an ecolinguistic perspective. It asks what kind of imaginary of nature in modern Sicily can be viewed through such shots of the natural world, how these imaginaries might reflect current ecosophy, and how compatible they might be with ecological principles. It applies the heuristic notion of ‘imaginary’, current in social sciences such as sociology, psychology, and anthropology, to the context of ecolinguistic enquiry, asks how our ideas of a place and its ecosystems may be socially or culturally determined, and how these factors play into a mindset which may, or may not, be ecologically sensitive. The findings suggest that tourism photographs tend to present place images that conform to strict generic criteria, responding to public expectations and pragmatic, commercial requirements. They neither present reliable images of Sicily, nor contribute to the propagation of a specific sense of place, but rather conform to a generic pattern that tends to homogenize tourist destinations at a global level.

Latin American universities have a strong tradition in discourse studies. Beginning in the sixties, local discourse analysis approaches introduced a critical turn that started in linguistics and semiotics and crossed social sciences establishing a new critical perspective. Ecolinguistics and environmental studies, on the other hand, present a different case. As a theoretical approach, ecolinguistics has found a hard time establishing itself as an autonomous discipline in the universities of the region, struggling with the tradition built by discourse studies. This article aims to analyse the development of Critical Discourse Studies (CDS) and ecolinguistics in Latin America to present a possible explanation of the difficulties ecolinguists have found in the region to introduce their scope in formal academic institutions and why critical discourse analysis (CDA) have remained far from the eco-perspectives in South America. We argue that Latin American CDA still maintains a Eurocentric vision while environmental perspectives remain loyal to the anthropocentrism and industrial fatalism posed by the dominant discourses. We believe that if issues approached keep an anthropocentric perspective while theoretical frames present a Eurocentric thinking, ecolinguistics, along with critical animal studies (CAS) and gender studies, may present an alternative to human-nonhuman-nature relations.

As opposed to Western ideologies that promote unrestrained consumption of environmental resources, Indigenous or Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK) encourages a more beneficial relationship with nature. In order to address underrepresented subjects and contexts, this article investigates the integration of TEK within political discourse by examining a corpus of speeches given by Aotearoa New Zealand former Minister of Foreign Affairs, Nanaia Mahuta, between 2020 and 2022. The study refers to the frameworks of ecolinguistics and Positive Discourse Analysis (PDA) to understand how Māori culture shapes Mahuta’s linguistic choices. Particularly, it focusses the attention on lexical and figurative items, drawing on the concepts of metaphor, framing, and intertextuality. Results show a considerable concern over the state of the environment in Mahuta’s speeches. Furthermore, they reveal the presence of an adaptation framing inspired by Indigenous thinking that acknowledges nature’s agency and complexity. The latter is used to conceptualise current environmental challenges and international cooperation directed at tackling them. Mahuta’s language ultimately supports the idea of interconnectedness within nature and offers as an instance of positive discourse in institutional settings.

Awareness of climate change as an intergenerational issue with inequitable risk burden for younger generations is a relatively recent phenomenon. However, youth activists have already managed to come to occupy a meaningful role in climate advocacy. Accepting the invitation to search for positive new discourses to live by, this paper applies a positive discourse analytical lens to the study of the online discourses produced by the youth climate activists of Generation Climate Europe (GCE), the largest coalition of youth-led networks on climate and environmental issues at the European level, examining how GCE newsletters and podcasts use discursive strategies and multimodal resources to communicate their message. The (corpus-assisted) positive discourse analysis of this GCE-produced content revealed that the youth activists designed a complex virtual space brimming with cross-references, intertextuality, and options for its audience that projected an identity for the coalition as a productive, solution-oriented, and agentive organization. The discourses produced by GCE were carefully tailored to a specific interpretive community and they aimed to both claim and impart authority and expertise. GCE’s interactional practices strove to generate wiggle room to resist the status quo and advocate for critical issues such as intergenerational justice and institutional transparency. In disclosing these results, the authors hope to have contributed to understandings of how sustainable climate advocacy is currently being enacted by youth within digital communication across platforms.

As explored in relevant literature, both ecolinguistics and cognitive linguistics emphasize metaphors as conceptual devices to frame the reality around us. Animal metaphor forms an interesting domain to comprehend human-animal relationship at the interface of ecolinguistics and cognitive linguistics. Deriving from this, the research questions the suitability of the animalized language through Conceptual Metaphor Theory (CMT) and Conceptual Blending Theory (CBT). Data from Twitter has been analyzed to understand how the animals on social media impacts the human mind in establishing speciesism among Bengali speakers. Hence, to supplement the research with an ecological perspective, a mixed-method approach has been employed using three studies: (1) to understand the general public opinion on using animal metaphor; (2) to present the cognitive operations of the imaginative mind in using animal metaphor; and (3) to check the reflection of human attitude in real-time practices. The research findings highlight the harmful frames that social media can trigger in the mental spaces of the users – excluding animals qua animals. Additionally, the research also empirically verifies that animalized language use is one of the significant factors behind the speciesist attitudes among Bengali speakers. The research also seeks to sensitize humans towards the hateful nature of the animalized tweets.

Based on the ecosophy of “diversity and harmony, interaction and co-existence”, the present study analyzes the characteristics of the attitude system of news reports on the adventures of China’s wandering elephants in China Daily to investigate whether the reports belong to ambivalent or beneficial discourse from the perspective of ecological discourse analysis. The findings show that judgement and appreciation resources are more frequently used than affect resources; negative resources are fewer than positive ones but some negative resources also have positive functions; more attention has been paid to human protection measures than to animals; besides, beneficial discourse accounts for the highest proportion, which shows China’s concept of ecological civilization. Based on the above analysis, suggestions are proposed for news discourse in communicating China’s ecological civilization: showing personal rather than general emotional experience in animal protection to express Chinese people’s love and concern for animals, appreciating positive emotions and the mutual helping behaviour of animals to express ecological consciousness indirectly, and taking full advantage of the links between affect, judgement and appreciation to express the moral judgement.

The main purpose of this study is to investigate the integration of environmental education into language education. Drawing inspiration from Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL), our focus lies on examining the kinds of participants in material processes in texts carefully chosen from a collection of widely utilized primary school Chinese language textbooks. We pay particular attention to the power and activity hierarchy of participants, to understand how these texts represent nature and the interconnections between fundamental elements in nature. Our findings reveal that these textbooks, through age-appropriate content, are deliberately crafted to instill environmental knowledge in young learners, nurture their ecological awareness and inspire actions aimed at safeguarding the delicate ecosystems that sustain all life forms.