This article will discuss Paulo Freire’s global influences on environmental pedagogies and argue that ecopedagogical reinventions are essential for ‘quality’ education, as touted in the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) #4, for global, all-inclusive ‘development’ that is planetarily sustainable. The politics of how ‘development’ is taught or not taught to be critically read linguistically and dialogically will be problematized through Freire’s work, and reinventions of his work, on ecopedagogy. As Freire was a pedagogue of critical literacy, ecopedagogical literacy widens (...) ‘reading the word to read the world’ (all humans, human populations) to read Earth to read the world as part of Earth. Such reading is not anthropocentric. The article will first describe Freire’s influence on reinventing environmental pedagogies, including education for (un)sustainable development (ESD), with specific discussions on how language of ‘development’ and corresponding (un)sustainability is framed. These influences from Freire will then be discussed through his de/re/constructions of citizenship, utopia and education, and globalization. Throughout the article, I will argue the need for teaching ecopedagogical literacy with ecolinguistics is essential to better understand the politics of language and (non)hierarchical dialogue which influence how ‘development’ goals are constructed, including the SDGs. (shrink)

This article reports a corpus-aided ecological discourse analysis of texts from an international mining company and an environmental advocacy group regarding a proposal to build a massive open-pit copper mine in the Santa Rita Mountains of Arizona, USA. The analysis details the grammatical and semantic clusters within the controversial environmental debate and how these clusters reflect the values and beliefs of each group as well as their conceptualization of the mountains and the environment. The integration of the ecolinguistic framework with (...) corpus linguistic methods of keyword analysis as well as part of speech and semantic tag analysis facilitated the identification of clusters of linguistic features perpetuating a dominant and ultimately destructive cultural discourse that places humans in a role of dominion and authority over the environment in the company texts. In contrast, clusters within the oppositional discourse forwarded by the environmental group promote the aesthetic value of the land and a need for responsible environmental stewardship. (shrink)

1. ‘Born into a world of stories’ (Bochner et al., 1997), humans share a propensity to experience and understand the world through narratives. We use narratives to situate ourselves physiologically...

ABSTRACTThis article presents an ecolinguistic analysis of a popular digital simulation game, Animal Crossing: New Leaf. As the popularity and immersive capability of digital gaming continue...

The need to decolonise the academy and academic writing requires that methodology for research be chosen carefully. The methodology of a study reflects the researcher's point of departure or worldview, as well as their belief system. The current coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has drastically influenced the functioning of higher education institutes, as well as how scholars plan and execute their research. This includes investigation into the global environmental crisis that is widely researched from various disciplines. These disciplines tend to (...) develop and favour different methodologies. The purpose of this presentation was to report on the inquiry into a suitable methodology to study social discourses about the environmental crisis. The methodologies investigated were an eco-linguistic approach to Critical Discourse Analysis, combined with eco-criticism, which was linked to the concept of an eco-sophy, using the framework of Dark Green Religion. The umbrella-concept of Dark Green Religion as a theoretical framework allows the comparison and incorporation of disparate methodologies as well as discourses. This framework also gives prominence to the role of religion in societal response to the environmental crisis. Due to the study being situated in an African context and striving to implement a decolonising discourse, some suggestions were made on decolonising research methodology in higher education. CONTRIBUTION: This article's contribution to new knowledge centred around situating current and new research in Africa in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic and deliberating on the impact for future studies. The conclusion was drawn that the COVID-19 pandemic can be a catalyst for re-interpreting research methodology from a decolonised perspective. (shrink)

The purpose of this study is to probe the implications of Derrida’s linguistic theories in his late philosophy. Adopting an interdisciplinary and deconstructive approach to critical discourse analysis that erodes the foundation of anthropocentric binary thought paradigms, this exploration of Derrida’s ecolinguistic dream of a more biocentric language problematizes three specific cognitive structures that represent an unsustainable form of dichotomous thinking. The philosopher illustrates that the concept of “human” and “animal,” the “genesis myth,” and the Cartesian notion of the Bête (...) machine are deadly delusions that must be replaced with a more biocentric outlook on life. (shrink)

This paper investigates how people conceive and evaluate nature through language, in a climate change context. With material consisting of 1,200 answers to open-ended questions in nationally representative surveys in Norway, we explore what semantic roles and values the respondents attribute to nature as well as to how they interact with the public debate about climate change. We observe that different conceptions and valuations of nature are tied to different perspectives on the climate change issue: some address the responsibilities of (...) causing climate change, others its consequences, and others yet its potential solutions. The study provides knowledge about the variety of conceptions of nature that can be mobilised by individuals and suggests that policy measures and public communication could benefit by taking this diversity into account. (shrink)

Biodiverse ecosystems play a key role in maintaining life on earth. In response to rapid declines in biodiversity throughout the world, the UN Biodiversity Summit 2020 brought together world leaders to discuss potential solutions. We draw on cognitive linguistics, critical discourse analysis and ecolinguistics in analysing the summit contributions. All speakers blended vocabulary from the fields of BUSINESS and NATURE; in doing so, they were able to advocate solving biodiversity loss by implementing approaches commonly found in business. In addition, three (...) main ‘moves’ were employed in these speeches: the state of nature was lamented, the interdependent relationship between humans and nature was mentioned and a call to action was given. It is argued that relying on the BUSINESS–NATURE blend for solutions to environmental problems serves to maintain the status quo and may obscure pathways to transformational change. Linguistic strategies for more effective environmental communication are suggested. (shrink)